Wednesday: House starts on 103 farm bill amendments

As a result, the House will start by debating and then voting on the rule, and then digging into all the various amendments. The first one to be taken up is a Democratic proposal to restore $20.5 billion in spending on food stamps, which will probably fail and lead dozens of Democrats to oppose the bill in the end.

{mosads}A few GOP amendments seek to scale back the food stamp program further, by ending a provision allowing some people to receive extra food assistance and by ending the promotion of food stamps in Mexico. Other amendments would tweak various commodity programs, reform the U.S. food aid program, repeal the federal sugar program and continue the prohibition on a marketing tax on Christmas trees.

In all, there are 50 Republican amendments in order, 35 Democratic amendments, and 18 bipartisan amendments. A full listing of them can be seen here.

The House is likely to work late into Wednesday night on amendments, but it is not yet clear whether the House can finish the farm bill by Thursday, or whether it will run into next week.

The Senate meets at 9:30 a.m., and will keep trying to reach an agreement on amendments to the immigration bill, S. 744.

Ten amendments are pending to the bill, including a few from Senate Republicans aimed at boosting border security. Republicans continue to insist on border improvements, but the Democratic-led Senate continues to reject them in votes that make them designed to fail — 60 votes were required on the first two GOP border amendments.