The farm bill flies under my radar most years. It usually receives bipartisan support. (Although not necessarily in a good way.) Not this year. From the NY Times:
WASHINGTON — The surprise defeat of the farm bill in the House on Thursday underscored the ideological divide between the more conservative, antispending Republican lawmakers and their leadership, who failed to garner sufficient votes from their caucus as well as from Democrats.
The vote against the bill, 234 to 195, comes a year after House leaders pulled the measure off the calendar because conservative lawmakers demanded deeper cuts in the food stamp program and Democrats objected. This year’s measure called for more significant cuts than the Senate bill, but it still did not go far enough to get a majority in the House to support an overhaul of the nation’s food and farm programs. Sixty-two Republicans, or more than a quarter of the caucus, voted with Democrats to defeat the bill.
Bob Greenstein (via Jared Bernstein) on a big (the?) reason it was defeated:
The House wisely rejected a farm bill today that included an unprecedented provision, added earlier in the day, to reward governors with large sums of unrestricted cash if they remove families from the SNAP (food stamp) program because the parents, through no fault of their own, cannot find jobs.
As I explained in a blog earlier today, this extreme provision would allow states to terminate benefits to households where adults — including parents with children as young as 1 year old and many people with disabilities — are not working or participating in a work or training program at least 20 hours a week. It would not require states to make any work opportunities available and would provide no jobs and no funds for work or training programs. Thus, people who want to work and are looking for a job but haven’t found one could have their benefits cut off. Their children’s benefits could be cut off, as well…
Why would a state do this? Because, under the measure, states would have a powerful financial incentive to pursue this route: it allows them to keep half of the savings from cutting people off SNAP, and to use the money for whatever state politicians want — tax cuts, special-interest subsidies, or anything else…
Some House leaders now say that the farm bill fell today because of members who oppose work requirements for SNAP recipients. The charge is patently false: the SNAP program already has work requirements and, as explained above, the Southerland amendment was an unjustifiable benefit cut-off for people who are willing to work, coupled with a bribe to states — not a work requirement in the normal sense.