The House is one step closer to completing its packed legislative agenda for the week after passing a farm bill reauthorization on Thursday.
That would normally have been the last vote of the week, but House GOP leaders need to keep lawmakers around to ensure a foreign surveillance law does not go dark at midnight.
They’re also talking to fellow Republican lawmakers to see if enough support exists to clear a partial Department of Homeland Security funding bill that will effectively end a 2½-month shutdown.
The farm bill reauthorization passed 224-200, with three Republicans and all but 14 Democrats voting in opposition.
It was a heavy lift for GOP leaders to get the farm bill through, as lawmakers from different regions of the country have competing priorities they want to see in the bill, which authorizes commodity, crop insurance and nutrition programs.
The result was a win for GOP leaders, as 96% of the conference supported it — the highest ever level of House Republican support for a farm bill, according to the Agriculture Committee.
The 14 Democratic votes in favor of the measure were the highest level of support from a minority party since 2008, the panel said.
“Working in Congress on behalf of our nation’s farmers, ranchers and rural communities is an honor — even when the work requires debating the farm bill through the night,” said Agriculture Chairman Glenn “G.T.” Thompson, Pennsylvania Republican. “It is clearer every day that farm country needs updated policy that reflects current challenges, and the 2026 farm bill fills that gap.”
The farm bill was almost pulled from the floor schedule this week after some Republicans complained about a procedural rule that would have tied a separate ethanol fuel bill to it after both measures passed so they would be sent to the Senate as a single bill.
The House will vote the week of May 11 on the bill to allow year-round sales of E15, an ethanol-gasoline fuel blend, after a procedural vote on whether to decouple it from the farm bill.
“It needs to be decoupled,” Rep. Harriet Hageman, Wyoming Republican, told The Washington Times.
She said she’s concerned about the E15 bill’s impact on small refineries because it would place new limits on their ability to receive compliance waivers from the Renewable Fuel Standard.
“I want to protect our refineries,” Ms. Hageman said. “We need to be constructing more refineries, not closing them down.”
Rep. Zach Nunn, Iowa Republican and proponent of the E15 bill, said the measure strikes the “right compromise.”
“It has been worked on over several months now, with both the big refiners the small refiners, finding a pathway for the medium ones,” he said. “Most importantly, my focus is on making sure the farmers get a fair shake in this. And they don’t get a fair shake if it never comes up for a vote.”
Authorizing year-end E15 sales has been a longstanding priority of lawmakers from Iowa and other Midwest states that produce corn, the base of most forms of ethanol.
