Congress Passes Watered-Down Farm Bill
Stripped down farm bill passes House
By Chris Casteel July 11, 2013
WASHINGTON — Republicans narrowly pushed through a farm bill stripped of nutrition programs on Thursday in a raucous session marked by Democratic charges that GOP House members had abandoned the nation’s poor.
The vote, strictly along party lines, was 216 to 208.
The strategy by House Republican leaders to get some part of the farm bill approved paid off temporarily, but the future of the legislation seemed as uncertain Thursday as it did last month when the House soundly rejected a traditional package of farm and nutrition programs.
Rep. Frank Lucas, the Oklahoma Republican who is chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, said he would try to get legislation through his panel to renew food stamps and other nutrition programs that were stripped from the farm bill.