Update on Congress and Farm Bill Fall-Out

Some good news, S. 204, the Right to Try Act passed the House by a vote of 250-169. You can see the roll-call vote here.

The House also passed S. 2155, the bill making modest changes to Dodd-Frank. This bill was passed with a closed rule, so amendments (including amendments auditing the Fed) were allowed. You can see that roll-call here.

The House is currently debating the National Defense Authorization Act. I will have an update on that later.

The rule for the NDAA allows the House leadership to bring the Farm bill back to the floor anytime before June 22. The vote on the Farm bill is expected after the vote on an immigration reform bill contain mandatory E-Verify.

Speaking of the Farm bill and rules, last week the House Rules Committee allowed only a handful of substantive pro-market reforms of reduced spending. One of those that made it was Representative Virginia Foxx’s amendment to reform the sugar program to protect American consumers from having to pay higher prices for sugar. That amendment was defeated by a vote of 137-278. You can see that vote here.

Another amendment offered by Representative Andy Biggs would have repealed the federal bioenergy programs. It was defeated 75-340. You can see that roll-call vote here.

One positive was passage of the amendment offered by Representative Jim Banks repealing the Obama administration’s anti-private property clean water rules. You can see that roll-call here.

The Rules Committee did allow a vote on Representative Tom McClintock’s amendment phasing out farm subsidies, which it called a “catch-all” for other reforms. Representative McClintock deserves credit for offering this important amendment, however, rules knew very well it would not pass this year, whereas other reform amendments would have—so they were playing a shell game by pretending to favor an honest debate on farm subsidies while blocking any chance of changing the programs. You can see the vote on McClintock here.