House OKs farm bill 251-166

WASHINGTON - The $100 billion-a-year farm bill passed the House 251 to 166 Wednesday after months of discussions and uncertainty.

U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton was the only member of Arkansas’ all-Republican House delegation to vote against the legislation.

U.S. Reps. Rick Crawford, Tim Griffin and Steve Womack, who voted for the measure, each said the bill is not perfect but it provides stability to the country’s farmers.

The Senate could take up the bill as early as the end of the week. U.S. Sens. Mark Pryor and John Boozman each said Wednesday they plan to vote for the farm bill.

The 702-page farm bill, formally known as the Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act of 2013, lasts five years. Originally written to address crop prices that bottomed out in the 1930s, the farm bill has grown to include food programs for the poor such as food stamps, and money to deal with soil erosion, unfair export prices and credit shortages that some farmers face.

The previous farm bill expired Oct. 1 when the House and Senate could not agree on the measure. Crawford and Boozman were members of the conference committee that reconciled the House and Senate versions of the bill.

Including automatic cuts known as sequestration, the bill cuts federal spending a total of $23 billion over the next decade, with some programs getting less funding and others expanding.

Among other cuts, the bill includes $18.4 billion less for farm programs, in part by ending direct payments to farmers, and $6.1 billion less for conservation programs because 23 conservation programs will be merged into 13 programs.

Spending on crop insurance programs increases by $5.7 billion and research spending increases by $1.1 billion.

Rather than cutting $40 billion from the food stamp program, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, like House Republicans wanted, the conference version only cuts $8 billion, in part by changing an eligibility rule that will cause about 850,000 households to lose about $90 in monthly benefits. The bill also provides a $200 million increase in financing to food banks.

The bill also includes Payments in Lieu of Taxes, a program in which the federal government compensates counties that have federal land within their borders for the taxes that could be collected if the land were privately owned. Fifty-six of Arkansas’ 75 counties received some of the $5.8 million paid in Arkansas last year.

Cotton said in a statement before the vote that he couldn’t support the farm bill because Arkansas farmers receive less funding than they have in the past, because it includes the food stamp program and because it does not change enough existing programs. The Republican from Dardanelle has said repeatedly that he thinks the farm bill should include only farm programs.

“This bill spends too much and leaves Arkansas farmers with too little,” Cotton said.“Arkansas taxpayers cannot continue to foot the bill for President Obama’s failed policies, and Arkansas farmers shouldn’t be held hostage to President Obama’s runaway food-stamp program.”

By phone after the vote, Cotton said the bill burdens taxpayers by spending too much while not addressing burdensome regulation of the livestock industry.

“I wish the bill would have turned out differently,” Cotton said.

Cotton is challenging Pryor for the U.S. Senate seat, and Pryor’s campaign has made Cotton’s opposition to the farm bill a key issue over the past few months.

Pryor quickly denounced Cotton’s vote.

“It’s reckless and irresponsible for Congressman Cotton to put his own ambitions ahead of what’s best for Arkansans, and the people of our state deserve better,” Pryor said in a statement Wednesday.

The other House members said they had problems with the bill, too, but said it was time to reach a compromise.

Crawford said Arkansas farmers and lenders needed the stability of knowing what farm policy is.

“They’ve been acting basically within a cloud of uncertainty for the last three years,” he said. The bill is “a backstop there in times of disaster.”

Crawford said he and Boozman tried to make sure Arkansas and other Southern agricultural states received a fair share of the money.

“We worked very, very hard to make sure there was not an undue bias toward Midwest production styles,” the Republican from Jonesboro said.

Womack said the bill isn’t perfect.

“In divided government, each side has to find common ground,” Womack said. “Overall it’s important that we have a farm bill. It’s been a very, very long and tedious task.”

Griffin said with Republicans leading the House and Democrats controlling the Senate and White House, it isn’t easy to please everyone.

“If that’s the standard, I’m not sure we’d ever pass anything,” the Republican from Little Rock said, adding that problems with the bill aren’t big enough to “scuttle” the whole thing.

Agricultural groups were split on the bill.

The National Chicken Council, National Pork Producers Council and National Turkey Federation, joined several meat-producer organizations to oppose the final bill.

In a letter to the heads of the House and Senate agricultural committees, the groups said they are concerned about the reach of the Grain Inspection Packers and Stockyards Administration, a U.S. Department of Agriculture agency that regulates the dealings between meat packers and producers. They are also upset that the bill doesn’t change country-of-origin labeling laws and deal with specifying where some livestock was born, raised and slaughtered. The World Trade Organization requires such labeling. Canada and Mexico have raised trade complaints that the U.S. is discriminating against foreign meat producers and are threatening to raise tariffs in response.

Womack said he hopes the House Appropriations Committee will work on the concerns, which affect the poultry producers in his district.

He said his concern over the two programs was “not sufficient enough, however, for me to go against the overall bill in itself.”

The American Soybean Association, the Catfish Farmers of America, USA Rice Federation all applauded the bill’s passage.

In separate news releases, both the Arkansas Rice Federation and the Arkansas Farm Bureau thanked every member of the Arkansas delegation except Cotton.

Arkansas Farm Bureau Rural Development Coordinator Beau Bishop said the bureau is pleased with the vote.

“As for Rep. Cotton and his vote … this is just a situation where we’re going to have to agree to disagree,” Bishop said. “Arkansas agriculture has a safety net in place today that they did not have yesterday.”

How much, if any, effect Cotton’s vote will have on his U.S. Senate campaign isn’t clear, two Arkansas political scientists said Wednesday.

Jay Barth, an associate professor of political science at Hendrix College, said Cotton would have been criticized whether he was consistent and voted no or changed his mind and voted yes.

“He does certainly continue to give Sen. Pryor a weapon there,” he said.

While Arkansas’ economy may not be as agriculturally driven as it once was, Barth said, the farm bill propped up the rural Southern economy for a long time.

“There is this sort of important symbolic connection of Arkansans, especially rural Arkansans, to this legislation,” he said. “It’s not just about the economy as much [as] a way of life that that legislation has brought.”

Hal Bass, a political science professor at Ouachita Baptist University, said the farm bill isn’t a driving issue for most voters the way it used to be.

“It’s an answer that has some ambiguities to it,” Bass said. “It’s more important in Arkansas than most states. Still, in terms of the absolute number of people who are going to make their voting decisions based on a single issue… that’s going to be much, much smaller.”

Other Arkansas House and Senate members have voted against the bill before.

According to the Congressional Research Service, 10 farm bills have passed since 1965. That year, 1st District Congressman Ezekiel Gathings, a Democrat from West Memphis, voted no. For the next 20 years, no member of the Arkansas delegation voted no, although several did not vote. Between 1985 and 1996 several House and Senate members from Arkansas voted no.

In 1996 three members of Arkansas’ delegation voted against the final bill, Rep. Blanche Lincoln, Sen. Dale Bumpers and Sen. David Pryor. No Arkansas member voted against final passage of the 2002 or 2008 farm bills.