Key Vote Alert – Scoring the Farm Bill + Amendments
KEY VOTE ALERT
The Farm Bill (HR 2) + Amendments
The Club for Growth opposes the Agriculture and Nutrition Act of 2018 (HR 2), and we urge all House members to oppose it. A vote on final passage is expected this week. The vote will be included in the Club’s 2018 congressional scorecard.
Every five years or so, we’re reminded of the GOP’s rank hypocrisy on this issue. The party claims to be for free markets, but then they coddle up to special interests by handing out subsidies, price controls, and unfair trade practices.
Conservatives fought hard during the last farm bill debate to break up the unholy marriage of agricultural subsidy programs and the food stamp program. Yet this bill maintains that union as if our previous efforts never happened. On top of that, this bill doesn’t make any meaningful reforms to farm subsidies. And the savings from the modest reforms to the food stamps program are plowed back into the bill in other areas, resulting in no savings at all.
In addition to scoring the overall bill, the Club for Growth will score the following amendments to HR 2. Only if ALL of them successfully pass will we lift our opposition to the overall bill.
YES on Biggs #10 – this repeals several bioenergy programs established in the 2002 farm bill.
YES on Banks Amendment #31 – this repeals the EPA’s Clean Water Rule, which was unilaterally imposed during the last administration.
YES on Foxx Amendment #32 – this reforms the communist-styled sugar program by ending production quotas and the costly sugar-to-ethanol boondoggle.
YES on McClintock Amendment #93 – this phases out all agricultural subsidies by the year 2029.
Our Congressional Scorecard for the 115th 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.