WASHINGTON, D.C. (9-17-26) — The Senate Ag Committee yesterday advanced the federal farm bill, passing the legislation on a party-line vote of 12 to 11.
U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) is encouraging the full senate to pass the bill — including a provision requiring states to help cover costs of the federal supplemental food program if error rates in a state exceed a certain point… “This is principally about production agriculture; and yes there’s a nutrition title, and it’s important, and there are people out there who need it — and that’s the whole purpose of these reforms is to ensure that it’s going to people who really need it and that there aren’t states out there who are gaming the program.”
He said committee democrats objected to that provision, despite bipartisan agreement on the rest of the bill… “I don’t understand how you can take a piece of legislation that has 100 bipartisan bills and then a process where you allow a manager’s amendment that had 18 — 18 democrat amendments, 16 republican amendments. This has been a very bipartisan process, and the objection is over a one-year delay in the reforms to the program that are designed to get fraud out of the program, to get the states to play ball.”
The bill passed out of committee on a party line vote once Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) returned after a three-month absence in the Senate. Thune said the bill should’ve been passed more easily… “I’ve been through these a lot. This is my fifth farm bill as a member of the House Ag Committee and now as the Senate Ag Committee. I’ve been through a lot of fights over individual titles in the bills over the years, but we always seemed to come together at the end — and honestly that’s what ought to be happening here folks.”
The farm bill now goes before the full Senate.
The full text of “Farm Bill 2.0” — formally titled the Agricultural Act of 2026 — is posted at the website of the Senate Agricultural Committee.
— Brookings Radio News
