Revised House Farm Bill: See How Your Reps. Voted Here

Today, the House Republican leadership pushed through a new version of the Farm Bill, just a few weeks after an earlier version of the bill failed spectacularly on the floor. It succeeded in passing, 216-208, attracting the majority of Republicans in spite of the fact that it contained no reforms at all that actually improved the bill or reduced its abundance of waste and corporate welfare. You can see the roll call vote HERE.

This new version was supposed to appeal to conservatives because it did not contain the food stamp title that they had fought to separate from the rest of the bill, but it contained absolutely no other reforms. The entire point of splitting the farm bill from food stamps was so that each bill could separately be debated and reformed. Instead, leadership allowed no amendments to reform the Farm Bill, and advanced the bill with zero notice or time to even read the bill.

Worse, the commodities title of the bill, which contains the special handouts to favored industries such as sugar, dairy, corn, soy, and many others, was made to fully replace the 1949 law that required they be renewed periodically.  This means that these blatant corporate welfare programs will now be even more impossible to reform.

Although the bill does eliminate the odious direct payment programs, it replaces them with an even more expensive new entitlement in the form of shallow loss insurance.  And even without the billions in increased spending that are likely to result from the shallow loss programs, this bill still spends more on agriculture than even its Democrat-led Senate companion.

And all this for naught, as the food stamp will certainly be reinserted into the bill in conference with the Senate anyway.

Sadly, only 12 Republicans recognized the ridiculousness of this revised Farm Bill and voted no in the face of tremendous pressure.  These 12 are:

Justin Amash (MI)
Ron DeSantis (FL)
Paul Cook (CA)
John Duncan (TN)
Trent Franks (AZ)
Phil Gingrey (GA)
Tim Huelskamp (KS)
Walter Jones (NC)
Frank LoBiondo (NJ)
Tom McClintock (CA)
Matt Salmon (AZ)
Mark Sanford (SC)

FreedomWorks rated this vote as a Key Vote and may include it in our scorecard for 2013.