The House Rules Committee kicked off its hearing on the budget reconciliation bill at one o’clock in the morning and met for more than 20 hours debating its merits. Once passed at that level, the bill went to the floor and was approved early Thursday morning. Agriculture Committee Chair Glenn ‘GT’ Thompson testified early Wednesday morning and defended the support for agriculture. “If farmers fail, we have food insecurity, which, quite frankly, is national insecurity.” Rather than dealing with portions of the farm bill in the reconciliation process, Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Angie Craig said the farm bill should be passed in regular order. “I know, my chairman sitting next to me does not want to cut SNAP by $300 billion and many of the colleagues on our committee did not want to do it because they didn’t show up for debate, they didn’t want to be on the record talking about this because they know it’s incredibly unpopular for the American people,” said Craig. “We have traditionally been able to get a bipartisan farm bill from the nutrition coalition and the farm coalition, but we’re destroying that here today, folks, and it has long-term consequences for us.”
