Speaker John Boehner, under pressure
Making just about no one but the hardest-right House Republicans happy, the House is scheduled to hold a vote Thursday afternoon on the farm components of the newly split farm bill. Nutrition components of the traditional farm bill are being split off into a separate bill so that House Republicans can vote to slash the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program even more deeply than they attempted to do in the failed farm bill vote last month.
Today's vote will include farm subsidies, yet is opposed by many farming organizations, Heritage Action, and the Club for Growth. House Democratic leadership is speaking out strongly against the bill, and the White House has suggested that President Obama would veto it.
Given all that, can the farm-only bill pass? No one really seems to know. You'd think John Boehner would only bring it to the floor if he knew he had the votes, but then, the failure of last month's farm-and-food farm bill seemed to come as a surprise, and Republicans seem to be taking their whipping down to the wire:
Boehner is conferring w/ McCarthy's chief of staff right now about the farm bill whip count. McCarthy is working the floor.
— @robertcostaNRO
Meanwhile, Democrats continue speaking against the substance of the bill, to some Republican distress:
Gohmert just yelled "OBJECTION!" as Pelosi was speaking. She said the GOP's revised farm bill hurts the poor. He jumped up immediatley
— @robertcostaNRO
Does Boehner have the votes to get this bill through the House that the Senate and the president won't be on board with, or will his leadership take yet another blow? We'll soon find out.