Far-right Republicans threaten to derail another House priority

The recent far-right rebellion that brought the House floor to a halt is a bad omen for another rapidly approaching legislative fight: the 2023 farm bill.

Major battle lines are forming within the House Republican caucus over the $1 trillion farm bill reauthorization expected to hit the full House this fall — just as Washington is set to descend into another all-consuming battle to fund the government. GOP hardliners are still fuming over the deal House Speaker Kevin McCarthy struck with President Joe Biden to raise the debt limit earlier this month, especially a provision that could expand the number of people on federal food aid. And they are keen to take another swing at limiting that anti-hunger program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, up for reauthorization in the farm bill — which promises to be politically polarizing.

Republican lawmakers from agriculture-heavy districts, however, want to move as quickly as possible to pass the legislative package — which contains billions of dollars for agriculture and rural development programs their constituents rely on. And they worry their far-right colleagues will snarl up those plans, pushing farm bill passage into the new year.

That’s presenting McCarthy with one of his biggest legislative tests yet: Fending off yet another revolt from the right flank of his caucus while securing the bipartisan support that will be necessary to approve the must-pass legislation. At the rate it’s going, Congress may have to resort to extending the existing farm bill authorizations as programs begin to expire this fall — a practical and political headache for the agriculture sector and ag-state Republicans as they gear up for the 2024 election.

It’s not just moderate Republicans raising alarms about the potential fall-out if the GOP-led House fails to pass a farm bill this year.

“I don't have a lot of confidence of anything passing the House anymore under the current environment,” said Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.).

DesJarlais, one of the few Republicans who is a member of both the Freedom Caucus and the Agriculture Committee, said he plans to reach out to all the fellow hard-right members he can in order to pass a farm bill with minimal delays. But he noted “there’s certain members … that I don’t think anybody can change their opinions.”

The notoriously complex farm bill reauthorization process, by design, requires similar bipartisan compromises to those that enraged conservative Republicans during the debt limit negotiations. GOP aides are already assuming that a swathe of far-right Republicans will not vote for the farm bill, and they’ll need at least four to five dozen Democratic votes to pass it in the narrowly-divided House.

But after taking a beating over that deal with the White House, and straining to defuse the Freedom Caucus’ rebellion on the House floor last week, McCarthy has signaled it will likely be politically necessary to offer up some concessions to the hard right in the farm bill. In addition to further cuts to SNAP, GOP hardliners are targeting some of the farm safety net programs that are a third rail for the agriculture sector.

A House Republican, who spoke of the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters, said any concessions from McCarthy to House GOP hardliners on the farm bill would be “a really dangerous pin to pull out of the grenade,” given the swift and bitter backlash it would stoke from the rest of the caucus.

The farm bill came up only in passing during McCarthy’s meeting with the leaders of the so-called “five families” GOP caucus factions earlier this week, as one of the many legislative items Republicans need to get done this fall, according to two House Republicans who were granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.

House Agriculture Committee staff have started compiling a 2023 draft of the farm bill as the panel races to complete a series of farm bill hearings. Negotiations on the text are expected to heat up later this month, with aides and lawmakers pushing for a committee markup by early September. The House-passed legislation will have to be reconciled with the version approved by the Senate. According to Senate Agriculture Chair and No. 3 Democrat Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Congress is “done” discussing SNAP work requirements in the wake of the debt limit talks.

Many lawmakers are beginning to worry that given the current trajectory, the reauthorization process could drag into 2024, which would put additional pressure on a U.S. agriculture sector already reeling from high inflation and, in turn, become a political headache for lawmakers in agriculture-heavy districts and states ahead of the 2024 election. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell recently took to the floor to warn that “time is running out” to pass a farm bill this year.

McCarthy has experienced a similar farm bill scenario in the past. He was the No. 2 Republican in the House in 2018 when Freedom Caucus members helped to sink a partisan House GOP farm bill on the floor. It took another seven months for Congress to get the final bill to then-President Donald Trump’s desk, giving Democrats ammunition to go after rural-district Republicans in the meantime. The Republican-majority Senate eventually stripped the House GOP’s steep SNAP restrictions from the final legislation, despite months of toil by McCarthy and then-Speaker Paul Ryan.

This time around, congressional leaders are facing even more of a time crunch and far-right Republicans are taking an even harder line, arguing McCarthy and fellow GOP leaders “watered down” new SNAP work requirements in their deal to raise the debt limit. Although he hails from an agriculture-heavy district in California’s Central Valley, McCarthy is still not heavily involved, personally, in the farm bill policy talks.

In private, however, the speaker has told fellow Republicans that in order to appease hardliners, the party will need to at least push for stricter work requirements and other restrictions on federal food assistance for low-income Americans beyond the debt deal provisions, according to three other GOP lawmakers who were granted anonymity to discuss internal matters.

“I think what the Speaker is saying is that let's not just let that be the end of the conversation. Let's have a good conversation, a bipartisan conversation about how we can have the most integrity and serve the most people with the dollars that we have,” said Rep. Brad Finstad (R-Minn.), chair of the House Agriculture subcommittee that oversees the country’s leading anti-hunger program.

Many moderate House Republicans, however, are done having that conversation for now — especially those who delivered their party the House majority in 2020 by flipping districts Biden won over Trump. Democrats are already attacking many of those vulnerable Republicans for their support of the debt deal and the new SNAP restrictions in it.

“We've negotiated a new level of requirements on SNAP and I think it's time to move forward from there,” said Rep. John Duarte (R-Calif.), who represents an agriculture-heavy California region that Biden carried by double digits in 2020.

Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon, another Republican in a Biden district, warned that pushing for SNAP restrictions beyond what Biden and McCarthy agreed to in the debt limit law would threaten the viability of the entire farm bill.

“You can't just have an agreement and then say we're gonna change it,” Bacon said. “In the end, if we get a bipartisan bill, you'll get enough Democrats on board where [opposition from some far-right House Republicans] won't be an issue.”

“I think that's the goal,” Bacon added. We don't want this to be a partisan bill.”

Some of the more centrist House Democrats who McCarthy will need to vote for the farm bill have also publicly warned him against attempting to include further restrictions on SNAP in the farm bill.

“SNAP is certainly one of the best tools we have for reducing poverty,” said Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez (D-Wash.) during a recent hearing, who noted rural communities like hers are more likely to be enrolled in the program than their urban counterparts.

Like Bacon, Rep. Sanford Bishop, a moderate Democrat who represents a rural stretch of Georgia, warned that additional GOP efforts to pare back nutrition spending in the farm bill threatens the future of the entire legislation — which includes key farm safety net programs moderate Democrats and Republicans need in their districts.

“It's inextricably tied together,” said Bishop.