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Roberts needs to read House farm bill offer

-The Hagstrom Report

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., needs to read a joint farm bill offer from House Agriculture Committee Chairman Michael Conaway, D-Texas, and ranking member Collin Peterson, D-Minn., before commenting on it, a Roberts spokeswoman said today.

“We’ll have to read it first, but it’s a good sign,” Meghan Cline, the Roberts press secretary, said in an email.

Earlier, Politico reported that Conaway and Peterson had come up with a joint offer, but did they not reveal details of it.



Peterson said that the offer addresses the stiffer work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that are in the House bill, but not the Senate bill, and that committee Democrats are “100 percent” behind it, according to the Politico report.

Committee Democrats had opposed the House bill over the SNAP work requirements and the House passed its bill on only Republican votes.



Senate Agriculture Committee ranking member Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., had not agreed to it, Peterson said.

Stabenow’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said this week that the farm bill must be done by the end of the year and that he had discussed it with President Donald Trump at a White House meeting on the legislative agenda

for the rest of the year.

Both houses of Congress have left for the Thanksgiving holiday and will return the week of Nov. 26.


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