Posted by: Phillip Fraas
May 14, 2008
Topic: REPORTS ON 2008 FARM BILL STATUS--January 2008 To Enactment

This afternoon, the House voted overwhelmingly (318 to 106) to approve the conference report on the new farm bill. The "conference report" is the final version of the farm bill reflecting all the compromises and revisions to the legislation that Congress has made over the course of the past few months. It is the version of the farm bill that wii go to the President for his signature or veto.

What happens now is that the Senate will get the conference report from the House later today, debate it, and vote on it probably tomorrow. Should it pass the Senate--and most expect it will--within a few days, the conference report will be converted by the congressional clerks into an enrolled bill and sent to the President for action by him.

The President has stated several times (most recently yesterday) that he will veto the bill. If that happens, he will send a veto message back to Congress and both houses will have to cast votes on the legislation a second time. But, to override the veto and ensure that the bill becomes law, the required majority will be 2/3 the second time around ( a 2/3 vote in the House is 291 votes and in the Senate it is 67 votes).

If both houses vote to override, the bill becomes law without the President's signature. If either body fails to override, the bill is dead in its current form; Congress would have to come up with an extension of current law or some other proposal acceptable to the President.

It is more likely than not that the bill won't get to the President for a veto and back to Congress for override votes before the end of this week. That means there is a chance that another one- or two-week extension of the current farm bill will be enacted later this week to give the veto/override vote scenario time to play out.

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FARM BILL UPDATE: Farm Bill Conference Report Passes House By Big Margin

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