Key Vote Alert – “NO” on “Farm Only” Bill (HR ___)

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KEY VOTE ALERT

The House “Farm-Only” Bill (HR ____)

The Club for Growth strongly opposes the “Farm-Only” bill and urges all House members to oppose it. We believe floor consideration of the bill could happen as early as this week. The vote on final passage will be included in the Club’s 2013 Congressional Scorecard.

Breaking up the unholy alliance between agricultural policy and the food stamp program within the traditional farm bill is an excellent decision on behalf of House leadership. However, the whole purpose of splitting up the bill is to enact true reform that reduces the size and scope of government. Sadly, this “farm-only” bill does not do that, especially under an anticipated closed rule. It is still loaded down with market-distorting giveaways to special interests with no path established to remove the government’s involvement in the agriculture industry.

Worse, we highly suspect that this whole process is a “rope-a-dope” exercise. We think House leadership is splitting up the farm bill only as a means to get to conference with the Senate where a bicameral backroom deal will reassemble the commodity and food stamp titles, leaving us back where we started. Unless our suspicions are proven unwarranted, we will continue to oppose this bill.

Our Congressional Scorecard for the 113th Congress provides a comprehensive rating of how well or how poorly each member of Congress supports pro-growth, free-market policies and will be distributed to our members and to the public.