Hoyer: House will vote on new farm bill

The House will likely vote on a complete farm bill with a new bill number Thursday in order to correct a clerical error that threatened the $290 billion agricultural program legislation, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said.

The bill would be identical to the conference report on the farm bill that was approved by the House and Senate last week.

{mosads}The House will delay its vote on the budget until after the Memorial Day recess, Hoyer said, but will go forward with votes on the Defense authorization bill.

Hoyer spoke with a group of reporters outside his office after House Democratic leaders huddled with House parliamentarians who advise them on procedure.

He said he had not conferred with House Republican leaders on his plans. Republicans have not been deferential in efforts to resolve the error.

"We were not consulted and we would object," said Michael Steel, spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio).

The problems developed because a portion of the bill was omitted from the version sent to President Bush. Bush vetoed the legislation Wednesday and the House quickly moved to override the popular legislation.

But as they were moving to a vote, Boehner pointed out the problem. After the House voted 316-108 to override Bush’s veto, Boehner made the point more forcefully that what Bush vetoed was not the same as the conference report that the House and Senate voted on.

Republicans questioned the constitutionality of overriding the President’s veto of an incomplete bill, even though a majority of their conference voted to do so.

“We voted to override a bill that had never been considered by the House and the Senate,” said Boehner, the only member of the GOP leadership who voted to sustain the president’s veto, issued earlier on Wednesday.

Hoyer said he had become aware of the problem roughly an hour earlier. It was not immediately clear if Hoyer learned of the error prior to the House vote.

Republicans criticized Democrats for moving forward with the override vote before all the facts could be learned.

“What’s happened here has raised serious constitutional questions — serious constitutional questions,” Boehner said.

Democratic and Republican leaders said the farm bill has to be passed before the budget can be passed because the budget introduces new financial constraints on Congress.

Also, if the House were to pass a new farm bill and then leave for its Memorial Day break, Bush could kill the farm bill with a “pocket veto” that cannot be overridden. But Congress could eliminate that problem by convening a “pro forma” session every few days.

Hoyer said that was an “interesting question” he’d not weighed. But he said he didn’t expect the White House to try to outmaneuver Congress on such popular legislation.

This story was updated at 8:31 p.m.