The House Just Rejected the 2018 Farm Bill

The Farm Bill is one of the country’s biggest and most important bills; it is a phenomenally complex and multi-sided omnibus bill covering everything from crop insurance to SNAP (better known as food stamps) to broadband internet in rural communities to food safety to environmental regulations. Because a new one only comes around about once every five years – it’s often delayed – each bill is an extremely big deal.

Today, the House voted on an $867 billion Farm Bill. The final vote was 198 for and 213 against; every Democrat voted against it, as did 30 of the most conservative Republicans.

Contrary to what its name suggest, the Farm Bill is not mainly about the actual farming industry, largely because the Department of Agriculture has so many duties. Because of the USDA’s heavy involvement with social programs like the aforementioned SNAP benefits, and school nutrition, the Farm Bill has become a battleground for those wishing to extend or shrink these programs.

As written by the Trump administration and its allies, the now-rejected Farm Bill included much stricter work requirements for SNAP recipients. The new Farm Bill would have increased the age of those subject to a work requirement from 49 to 59 years old, and raise the number of hours of work required from 20 to 25 hours per week. Work requirements would also be extended to those with children over the age of 6; previously, those with children under the age of 18 were exempt. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that 1.2 million people per month would be disqualified for SNAP under those changes.

But, incredibly, none of this is why the bill was rejected. Instead, the 30 Republicans who voted against the Farm Bill did so to fulfill a threat they had made before the vote: that if a completely separate bill wasn’t put up for a vote, they would vote down the Farm Bill.

That separate bill is known by shorthand as the Goodlatte bill, named for the House representative who wrote it, Bob Goodlatte (R-VA). The Goodlatte bill is a very conservative immigration bill that, among other things, would require employers to use the E-Verify tool to make sure their employees are legally allowed to work in the U.S., and would allow the Department of Justice to withhold grants from so-called “sanctuary cities.” The Goodlatte Bill would allow DACA recipients to remain in the country, but would force them to renew their status every three years, with no path to citizenship. Republicans have yet to push the bill forward out of a belief that it would flop on a vote, and badly.

The Senate is currently working on its own version of a Farm Bill.

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