Conservatives torpedo farm bill
WASHINGTON – In a major blow to House Speaker Paul Ryan, Republican leaders failed to garner enough votes for a sweeping GOP farm bill amid a revolt from hard-line conservatives who opposed the bill because of an unrelated immigration fight.
Friday’s 198-to-213 vote was an embarrassing defeat for Ryan, R-Wis., who had championed the farm bill as a major step toward welfare reform but saw that GOP priority squelched by members of his own Republican conference. Thirty Republicans, conservatives and moderates alike, voted against the House leadership bill, along with all 183 Democrats who were present.
While the bill faced almost no chance in the Senate – where legislation requires 60 votes and therefore the backing of at least 10 Democrats – supporters said passage would be considered a success for House Republicans. President Donald Trump also supported the measure. White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said the president was “disappointed in the result of today’s vote.”
Ryan and other GOP leaders will now have to grapple with the volatile issue of immigration to satisfy arch-conservatives who want the House to vote on a hard-line measure that would slash legal immigration and authorize construction of Trump’s border wall. Members of the House Freedom Caucus said Republican leaders had failed to make good on promises to deal with the immigration issue, and their only leverage was to hold up the farm bill.
Ryan is also being squeezed by moderates who support a softer approach to immigration, and they will almost certainly be emboldened by Friday’s vote to ratchet up their push for a bipartisan immigration bill.
More immediately, Friday’s vote opened a new rift among Republicans, with many rank-and-file party members furious with the conservative faction for tanking a farm bill that included a major conservative priority: adding work requirements to the food stamp program.
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., a Freedom Caucus member, dismissed the vote as just a temporary setback and said the party would regroup and be able to pass both the farm bill and immigration legislation.