Dive Brief:
- House agriculture chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson said Wednesday he aims to push the farm bill through a key committee before the end of May.
- Thompson intends to pass the bill out of committee before Memorial Day, a spokesperson for the head of the House Agriculture Committee confirmed in an email. No further details were provided.
- Progress on the $1.5 trillion farm bill has stalled in part due to political divisions over how to dole out funding for climate and commodity subsidies. Senate Republicans on Wednesday unveiled a separate piece of legislation aimed at enhancing crop insurance.
Dive Insight:
As agriculture leaders scramble to reach an agreement on a farm bill, it may be too late to approve the $1.5 trillion spending package this year due to congressional scheduling issues and other priorities ahead of the November election.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer left the farm bill off the list of legislative priorities for the rest of 2024, raising the alarm for some Republicans.
“A one-year extension of the 2018 Farm Bill is going to expire on September 30,” Sen. Chuck Grassley wrote in a letter to Schumer on Tuesday. “The Senate must work to pass a bipartisan Farm Bill before that deadline.”
Republicans are attempting to address some of the major political sticking points holding up farm bill progress in separate legislation. The Federal Agriculture Risk Management Enhancement and Resilience Act introduced Wednesday increases crop premium support for the highest levels of coverage.
Assuming the farm bill is able to move out of committee before Memorial Day, lawmakers would have roughly 35 legislative days to pass the package through both chambers. To finish before the September 30 deadline would require bipartisan compromise, Grassley said in his letter.
“You said that Democrats are, ‘ready to work with [Republicans] to find compromise […],’” Grassley wrote to Schumer. “So I call on you and the rest of my Democratic colleagues in the Senate to do the hard work of coming to the table to bring forward and pass a bipartisan Farm Bill this year.”