Earlier we posted about the farm bill that just came out of committee. We suggested — partly based on some news coverage we read that seems not to have been correct — that Louise Slaughter had more or less shut down debate on the bill. Slaughter’s office has contacted us with an explanation of why this isn’t really true.

I’ll post some of what they said below, but here’s the important point (and this is why reporting on Congress is so tricky): controlling the debate intelligently is what makes Congress function. Too little debate and you’ll have an imperial government, as we did under the Republicans from 2001 to 2006. Too little much, and nothing will pass. At some point debate does have to be stopped, especially when it is believed that what is being debated will hamper the bill. Here’s more details of what happened (from Slaughter’s office):

[Your post]…links to an article that states that the amendment in question was introduce by Rep. Paul Ryan. This amendment however was submitted to the Rules Committee not only by Rep. Ryan, but also by Reps. Kind, Flake, and Blumenauer. The lead sponsors of this amendment were Reps. Kind and Flake, so it was referred to as the Kind/Flake Amendment, or the Fairness in Farm and Food Policy Amendment. This amendment would have completely altered the Farm Bill by severely cutting subsidies for commodity crops, and increased funding even further for nutrition, and conservation programs.

Contrary to what the post says, this amendment (H.AMDT. 700) was made an order by the Rules Committee, and it was debated on the floor of the House for 40 minutes (debate on other amendments was limited to 10 minutes). At the conclusion of the debate, this amendment failed in a recorded vote, 117-309 (Roll no. 747).

As for the complaint that congresswoman slaughter should have let it come to the floor in a more open manner, we feel that this ignores the complex steps that the bill had already taken before it reached the rules committee. It had been through numerous meetings and committees and the job of the rules committee is to function in the fairest way possible will stil allowing the work of the house to proceed.

Congresswoman Slaughter also wished to point this out:

The farm bill bars farmers making more than $1 million in annual adjusted gross income from receiving federal subsidies (the previous limit was $2.5 million), including conservation programs, as well as farmers making between $500,000 and $1 million if less than 2/3 of their income comes from farming.

Things like this are an important step forward for American agriculture.