House Passes Scaled Back Farm Bill without Food Stamps

WASHINGTON (AP) — House approval of a scaled-back farm bill is setting up what could be an even bigger fight over food stamps and the role of domestic food aid in the United States. Food stamps have been a part of farm bills since the 1970s to gain urban Democratic votes for the rural measure.

That union has soured as the food aid has exploded in cost and Republicans have taken aim at the program. Republican House leaders won passage of the smaller farm bill on a party-line vote Thursday by dropping a section of the bill that dealt with food stamps, saying they would deal with that issue separately. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor says that Republicans will "act with dispatch" on a food stamp bill.