Unrelated immigrant dispute kills farm bill in House
Conservatives wanted vote on migrant issue
WASHINGTON — In an embarrassment for House Republican leaders, conservatives on Friday scuttled a bill that combines stricter work and job-training requirements for food stamp recipients with a renewal of farm subsidies popular in GOP-leaning farm country.
With 30 Republicans joining Democratic opponents, the House rejected the bill, 213-198. Members of the conservative Freedom Caucus withheld their votes over leaders’ refusal to allow a vote on immigration reform.
Three Pennsylvania representatives were among the Republicans voting no — Keith Rothfus of Sewickley, Scott Perry of York and Brian Fitzpatrick of Bucks County.
“This bill was a missed opportunity for serious reforms of agricultural subsidy programs,” Mr. Rothfus said in a written statement after the vote. “We must reform our agricultural programs in a manner that limits exposure to the forgotten men and women in our country: the hardworking taxpayer.”
Most Republican “no” votes, however, appeared to come out of frustration with leadership’s unwillingness to address immigration rather than out of disenchantment with the content of the farm bill. Members of conservative Freedom Caucus led the opposition from within the party, saying they wouldn’t vote for the farm bill without an immigration vote.
For Democrats, a major sticking
point was a work requirement for beneficiaries of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly referred to as food stamps, although they had many other objections, including what they saw as the bill’s failure to do enough for crop insurance, conservation, research and protection from invasive species.
“This body gives money out to rich people all the time and doesn’t ask for any work requirements,” U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., said in a floor speech. He called the bill an effort to blame and shame the poor.
Democrats like U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle of Forest Hills said they won’t allow Republicans to cut social service programs like SNAP in order to pay for revenue losses that stem from corporate tax cuts they pushed through in December.
“I’m not going to pay for their tax cuts on the backs of the poor, and that’s what they want to do,” Mr. Doyle said in an interview Friday.
Republican supporters said the bill’s work requirements provide a compassionate boost to able-bodied SNAP recipients.
Leaders of the Pittsburghbased anti-hunger group Just Harvest say there are better ways to do that.
“If Congress wants to reduce the number of people receiving SNAP, they need to look at ways to reduce hunger and poverty,” Just Harvest said in a statement before the vote. “Instead of cutting access to food assistance, they should be strengthening SNAP while also making real investments in job training and education; ensuring that workers are paid living wages; and supporting people’s ability to maintain employment by funding affordable, high-quality child care and medical leave.”
In Pennsylvania, more than 80 percent of SNAP funding goes to households with children, seniors or people with disabilities, according to the state Department of Human Services, which administers the program.
Mr. Rothfus said he would have voted for the bill if it restricted the wealthiest farmers’ use of subsidies through agricultural risk programs designed to stabilize the agricultural industry. Those subsidies are currently available to individual farmers with annual incomes below $900,000 and couples with income below $1.8 million. Mr. Rothfus wants those limits reduced to $500,000 and $1 million.
“When you have very wealthy folks taking advantage of these programs and you have crop insurance subsidies on top of that, you have to start asking some questions,” he said in an interview Friday.
Although Mr. Rothfus is a former member of the Freedom Caucus, he said his no vote had nothing to do with caucus members’ efforts to leverage an immigration vote.
Friday’s vote was a blow to GOP leaders, who had hoped to tout the new work requirements for recipients of food stamps.
More broadly, it exposed fissures within the party in the months before the midterm elections, and the Freedom Caucus tactics rubbed many rank-and-file Republicans the wrong way.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., took steps to call for a re-vote in the future, but it’s not clear when the measure might be revived. A handful of GOP moderates opposed the bill, too, but not enough to sink it on their own.
In any case, Mr. Ryan has an obvious problem on his hands.
“His caucus is in mutiny,” Mr. Doyle said. “It’s a caucus that’s at war with each other. It’s fractionalized and you’ve got a lame duck speaker who just can’t seem to get the ball lined up.”
In the Senate, the chamber’s filibuster rules require a bipartisan process for a bill to pass. There, Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., promises a competing bill later this month, and he’s signaling that its changes to food stamps would be far more modest than the House measure.