WASHINGTON - An alliance of House Democrats who feared cuts to programs that help feed the poor and of Republicans who said the spending reductions did little to reduce the federal deficit sank the 2013 farm bill Thursday.
Rep. Tom Cotton of Dardanelle was the only member of Arkansas’ all-Republican House delegation to vote against the legislation.
Cotton joined 61 other Republicans and 172 Democrats who voted “no.” The bill failed on a 195-234 vote.
Called the Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act of 2013, the bill would have set agriculture policy - including federal support for farmers, conservation and rural economic development - and nutrition programs for the next five years. Most of the money in the bill was directed to nutrition, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps.
Members of both major parties blamed the other side for the defeat, although it wasn’t a party-line vote.
“I’m extremely disappointed that [Democratic Minority Leader] Nancy Pelosi and Democratic leadership have at the last minute decided to derail years of bipartisan work,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va. “This bill was far from perfect, but the only way to achieve meaningful reform.”
Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota, the ranking Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, blamed Republicans, even though the lion’s share of “no” votes were made by members of his party.
“The House farm bill died today because House Republicans could not control the extreme right wing of their party,” he said.
The bill would have authorized $940 billion in spending over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, a reduction of $33 billion over the next decade compared with projected spending levels if cur-rent farm policies were kept intact.
Most of the cuts, about $20 billion over 10 years, would have come from the food stamp programs, which account for about 78 percent of the farm bill’s spending. Last year, the program paid out $80.4 billion.
The nutrition cuts would have taken 210,000 children off the federal school-lunch program, according to Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass.
“That’s just a rotten thing to do,” he said.
The farm sections of the bill would have replaced direct payments made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to farmers before they plant a crop with an insurance-based system, which would provide federal assistance after crop yield losses or significant price declines.
Randy Veach, president of the Arkansas Farm Bureau, found out about the bill’s demise when he was driving across his Mississippi County farm to inspect a wheat combine. He thought the vote might be close, but he had expected the legislation to pass.
While he said Arkansas cotton and rice farmers would prefer to keep the system of direct payments, Veach said the bill did a good job satisfying various farming groups, including planters of row crops, like wheat and corn; fruit and vegetable growers; and ranchers.
“Pretty much all of agriculture was supportive of the farm bill,” he said. “We thought we were in better shape than this. This is a big surprise.”
Earlier this month, the Senate passed its version of the farm bill, which would have reduced spending by a lower amount - $24 billion over 10 years. Both of Arkansas’ senators, Mark Pryor, a Democrat,and John Boozman, a Republican, voted for it.
Merle Black, a political science professor at Emory University, said that historically when farm bills come up, Southern conservatives have felt a tension between voting for government spending and satisfying the needs of their rural constituents.
Black said the answer is often clear: “Usually they do well by their farmers.”
‘NOT REAL CUTS’
Cotton, the only Arkansas House member to vote against the bill, defended his vote, saying the farm bill did little to benefit Arkansas producers and did not provide meaningful cuts in food stamps.
When the Congressional Budget Office projected the 10-year cost of the 2008 farm bill, it predicted spending on food-stamp programs would cost $406 billion. Spending increased more dramatically as chronic high unemployment rates drew more people to the program.
In its examination of Thursday’s failed bill, the Congressional Budget Officefound that the 10-year cost of food-stamp programs would balloon to $763.5 billion. The bill that died Thursday would have reduced that spending by $20 billion, an increase of more than $300 billion over the level of spending predicted just five years ago.
“These are not real cuts,” Cotton said.
Cotton said he had spoken extensively with Arkansas farmers before the vote. He said his staff had tabulated projections from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Congressional Research Service and House Agriculture Committee and found that Arkansas farmers would see only 0.5 percent of all the funds from the farm section of the legislation, a 50 percent drop compared with the 2008 farm bill.
“Arkansas farmers know I’m looking out for their interests,” he said. “I don’t think this bill was a good deal for taxpayers.”
Freshmen congressmen like Cotton are “in between a rock and a hard place” on farm-policy votes, said Andrew Dowdle, a political science professor at the University of Arkansas.
Dowdle said that in order to get re-elected, newly minted representatives need to tend to the concerns of their constituents. And Cotton’s rural district includes a large number of farmers. At the same time, ambitious lawmakers, who either want spots on prestigious committees or want to seek statewide office, must be responsive to party leaders, grass-roots activists and national political fundraising groups.
In the 2012 election cycle, Cotton received $250,000 from The Club for Growth Political Action Committee, a Washington group that promotes low taxes and small government.
Barney Keller, spokesman for The Club for Growth, called his group’s opposition to the farm bill a “no-brainer.”
“It’s kind of hard to explain to your constituents why you voted to expand an Obama welfare program,” he said.
Dowdle said lawmakers like Cotton, who is often mentioned as a potential challenger to Pryor in 2014, will benefit from continued fundraising from outside groups if he jumps into the race. Cotton has not announced whether he will run.
“With the growth in Arkansas of outside money, those national conservative voices tend to be much louder now than they were a decade ago,” Dowdle said.
CHEERS AND APPLAUSE
On Thursday afternoon, as the House members’ electronically recorded votes were being tabulated, lawmakers watched silently as a clock above the chamber ticked off the remaining seconds in the vote.
“3-2-1,” members chanted, and lawmakers from both sides who helped take the bill down in defeat broke out in cheers and applause.
Not all were jubilant.
Shortly after the the vote, Arkansas’ Rep. Tim Griffin exited the chamber, grim-faced.
“This was a missed opportunity for reform,” he said.
Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Ark., a member of the House Agriculture Committee, had successfully inserted two amendments into the failed bill. One would have prohibited the Environmental Protection Agency from disclosing farmers’ personal information and the other would have relaxed rules governing fuel storage on farms.
Crawford said failure to pass an updated farm bill by Oct. 1 would mean farm policy would revert to a 1949 law, “causing drastic price increases for consumers and major disruptions for farm operators.”
Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., said members of the GOP should have voted for the bill.
“For some of the most conservative members of our party, if it’s not perfect, if it doesn’t do everything they want, it’s not good enough,” Womack said.
The most likely scenario, Womack said, is for the House to pass a continuing resolution that keeps current farm and food-stamp funding in place for a short time, perhaps six months or one year.
The problem with that, Womack said, is that farmers need the certainty of a five year farm program. Not only would passage of the bill Thursday have provided for that, Womack said, but it also would have made cuts in food stamp programs that fiscal conservatives want.
“You have to get your gains where you can get your gains,” he said. “If it’s ‘my way or the highway’ you’re going to end up with the highway.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 06/21/2013