Food-Stamp Clash Combines With Election to Slow Farm Revamp

Congress’s election-year calendar and conflicts over food stamps may make this week’s House Agriculture Committee consideration of a farm-aid and nutrition bill the measure’s last advance before current law expires at the end of September.

House leaders would rather sidestep divisions over food-stamp spending and delay the bill until after the November election, analysts and lobbyists say. Appropriations legislation and possible votes on repealing President Barack Obama’s health-care plan will compete for time. Given the political thorniness of the agriculture bill, a series of short-term extensions is possible, said Harwood Schaffer, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee.