Page 77 - Farm Bill Series_The 7 Things You Should Know

Democrats had lost control of the House in the Tea Party wave that swamped Washington in
2010, driven in part by the stimulus bill and the rapid growth of programs like SNAP.

The table was set for another major test of the farm-food coalition.
The alliance paid off for farmers as well as the needy

At no time in the modern history of farm bills has the urban-rural, farm-nutrition alliance
probably been more mutually beneficial, or more obvious, than in 2002 and 2008.

Both bills, which passed Congress with broad, bipartisan support, increased spending on farm
programs as well as nutrition assistance, and the 2008 version had to overcome a veto by George
W. Bush, whose main objection was to a new revenue-based subsidy program that it created for
Midwest growers. (The program, Average Crop Revenue Election (ACRE), turned out to be far
less popular and costly than Bush feared.)
The 2002 farm bill created a new counter-cyclical commodity program to augment the fixed
annual payments that were created by the 1996 law but proved insufficient when commodity
prices tanked. The bill passed the House, 280-141, with 141 Republicans and 137 Democrats in
support, and then cleared the Senate 64-35. Only seven Senate Democrats voted against it.

Six years later, the Senate voted 80-14 to override Bush’s veto of the 2008 farm bill, which had
to be considered twice because of a legislative error in the initial version. Only two Senate
Democrats supported the veto.

The House overrode the veto, 319-109, with only 13 Democrats no votes. House Republicans
split on the bill, 99-96.

When the 2008 farm bill came up for renewal, Democrats in the Senate would be crucial again in
pushing the legislation across the line.

The coalition at risk: Demographic shifts and the Tea Party rise

As lawmakers prepared to replace the 2008 farm bill, the urban shift that Dole and his colleagues
worried about in the 1960s and 1970s had continued, coupled by an equally dramatic
polarization. In 2010, only about 19 percent of Americans lived in rural areas.

When new congressional lines were drawn after the 2010 census, 40 of the 435 House districts
were 100 percent urban and more than half the districts were at least 86 percent urban. Just 34
districts nationwide were at least 50 rural, according to an analysis by ProximityOne.

Meanwhile, Democrats and major farm districts were disappearing along with urban
Republicans. In 1996, the last time Congress had undertaken major cuts to nutrition programs,
there were 44 Republicans representing districts in the Northeast. By the time Congress would
start work on a new farm bill in 2012 that number would drop to 26, according to a University of
Illinois analysis.

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