WASHINGTON — The stalemate on the current farm bill could usher in a new era in farm policy, because like the last three farm bills, it is caught in a trend of delays and partisan divisions — a contrast to the history of bipartisan cooperation on legislation.

Every five years, Congress must draft a new federal farm bill. The omnibus bill, which began 90 years ago as various types of payments to help farmers, now has an impact far beyond agriculture: It includes programs to create wildlife habitat, combat climate change and provide the largest federal food program in the country.

The current farm bill process, already nearly a year behind schedule, is at an impasse as Democrats and Republicans clash over how to fund the bill and whether to limit food and climate programs. The previous farm bill was set to expire in September 2023 and was extended until the end of September this year.

Historically, farm bills have been passed within a few months of their expiration date. Ten of the 13 farm bills since 1965 were passed by December 31 of the year they expired. However, three of the four farm bills since 2008 remained in effect beyond that date.

The last three bills – including the 2018 bill, which was the only current version to pass on time – have all faced partisan disagreements over spending.

The trend represents a shift in the view of once bipartisan legislation.

“The last two farm bills were an anomaly,” said Jonathan Coppess, a professor of agricultural law and policy at the University of Illinois who has written a history of the farm bill. “Now that we've had three in a row, I'm not sure that will continue.”

A recent report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service finds that since 2008, there have been delays, vetoes and insufficient votes in passing farm bills.

The report concluded: “Over time, farm laws have become increasingly complicated and politically sensitive. As a result, the timeline for reauthorization has become more uncertain.”

Spending debate

This uncertainty also applies to the current farm bill, as Republicans in the House and Senate are pushing for spending restrictions that Democrats say are unworkable.

“I don't think we're close to passing a farm bill until the people negotiating the farm bill have a realistic idea of ​​what can be done in a resource-constrained environment,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in an interview on the AgriTalk radio program on June 21.

The Republican-led House Agriculture Committee passed its draft farm bill in late May largely along party lines, after hours of debate and complaints from Democrats that the process was not as bipartisan as in previous years.

Four Democrats voted for the bill in committee, but joined 20 other Democrats on the committee in a “dissenting views” letter expressing “genuine concern about the development of the majority's partisan farm bill” and predicting that without significant changes, it would face delays and dysfunction.

The Senate Agriculture Committee has yet to vote on it. Republican and Democratic committee chairs have each put forward different bills and expressed frustration.

“The most frustrating time”

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat who is retiring after this term, called the process the “most frustrating” of her career and said she would not allow the Republican approach to the farm bill to become her legacy.

“I was actually involved in six agricultural bills and led three of them, and this was the most frustrating time,” Stabenow said in an interview with Michigan advance End of June. “Because things are so much more partisan than usual, especially when it comes to food aid.”

Partisan differences are not uncommon in today's Congress, but they are particularly evident on the farm bill, which has brought together lawmakers from both camps in the past. Bipartisan support may be necessary for final passage, because the $1.5 trillion farm bill means it will inevitably lose votes from fiscal conservatives and others.

“If there isn't a bipartisan bill, this isn't going to happen, regardless of who's in charge. The differences are too small to get this done without bipartisan support,” said Collin Peterson, a former Democratic member of the House of Representatives from Minnesota and chairman of the Agriculture Committee.

The central point of contention for Democrats this year is a funding calculation that would place limits on the Thrifty Food Plan formula used to calculate benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Republicans are using the caps to offset other spending in the crop subsidy bill. The top Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee, Sen. John Boozman of Arkansas, said he wants to “put more agriculture in the farm bill.”

Peterson, who now heads a consulting firm of the same name, said in an interview with States Newsroom that Republicans would likely need to make changes to the nutrition title to get a bill to final passage.

“It's unrealistic to think they're going to achieve that without making significant changes to that part of the law,” he said.

An “uneasy alliance” from the start

The nutrition program at the center of the impasse was inserted into legislation 50 years ago to help build a coalition with broad, bipartisan support.

In 1973, lawmakers added the “nutrition” title to the Farm Bill, a move that increased interest in the bill in the House. Lawmakers who wanted to increase payments to cotton and wheat farmers in their districts were able to gain the support of lawmakers from districts whose citizens could benefit from food aid.

“This was the first coalition between the two interests,” said Coppess. “But it was quite intense. And it was an uneasy alliance from the start.”

Since then, the Farm Bill has become, in many ways, a food bill. Three-quarters of the bill's mandatory spending falls under the nutrition section, which includes SNAP, the largest U.S. hunger-fighting program.

The program, formerly known as Food Stamps, supplements the food budgets of low-income households. Hunger-fighting groups push for such a law every five years.

But because the nutrition program has such a large funding budget, it has become a target of Republicans who want to cut it to offset other spending in the bill.

“The argument is about pay,” Peterson said. “And that's what the last three farm bills were about, and that's an issue with this one, too.”

Peterson, who chaired the House Agriculture Committee on the 2008 farm bill and was the top Democrat on the committee on the 2013 and 2018 bills, said partisan divisions on the committee are nothing new at this stage of the process.

The agricultural legislation he helped draft also met with partisan support in the House of Representatives, but after a conference with the Senate, it ultimately received bipartisan support.

“Ultimately, each of these bills was partisan until we got it through the House committee, and then it was bipartisan because the Senate brought some of it to the table,” Peterson said. “So what's going on here involved the last three farm bills.”

The most recent farm bill, passed in 2018, was marked by a controversial partisan debate over SNAP's work requirements and other eligibility requirements.

The House Agriculture Committee's bill initially failed in the House this year, but was then narrowly passed by a vote of 213 to 211. Twenty Republicans joined all Democrats in the House in voting against the bill.

After agreeing to the Senate bill and removing some of the controversial changes to SNAP, most Democrats gave their approval and the House approved the final conference report in a bipartisan vote of 369 to 47. The dissenting votes included 44 Republicans and three Democrats.

A trend towards rupture

The party-political disagreement over the focus on nutrition is creating new fault lines in the agricultural law.

Historically, alliances around farm legislation have been regional rather than partisan, based on shared support for common crops or producers: cotton in the South, corn in the Midwest, and wheat in the Western Plains.

“Our biggest issue in the four farm bills I wrote was not the Republicans versus the Democrats. It was usually the Midwest versus the Southeast, the Northeast or the Southwest when it came to growing crops,” former Senator Saxby Chambliss said in an interview.

Chambliss, a Republican from Georgia, served on the House Agriculture Committee from 1995 to 2002 and on the Senate Agriculture Committee from 2005 to 2011, where he also served for a time as chairman and ranking member.

“There's a different political dynamic in the Senate today that didn't exist when I was there,” Chambliss said. “How much of that is going into the farm bill? I don't know the answer to that, but obviously it's a little more acrimonious than anything I've ever experienced.”

As party political positions have become increasingly entrenched in some parts of the country and the southern states have become more aligned with the Republican Party, this has also had an impact on policy in the area of ​​agricultural legislation.

“You can see a decisive realignment, with the regional and the party aspects now very similar,” said Coppess.