Last Tuesday, Senator Mitch McConnell returned to Congress after a three-month absence and promptly cast a deciding vote in the Republican-led Agriculture Committee. Back in August, Democrats on the committee blocked the Senate’s version of the farm bill from progressing to a full vote.
But even after McConnell’s vote, the way things are going, it’s unlikely that Congress will pass a farm bill this year, which would mark the fourth straight year that lawmakers have failed to renew the nation’s cornerstone of agricultural policy.
The issues that made Democrats oppose the farm bill last month are still there, meaning the path to surviving a vote on the Senate floor remains unclear. With 53 seats, Republicans hold a majority in the chamber, but they need 60 votes to pass a bill — so they would need to sway several Democrats to their side in a relatively short amount of time. Midterms, after all, are in November.
Democrats mainly oppose the curr... Read more
