House Agriculture Committee Approves Farm Bill

WASHINGTON â€"  After a late-night session Wednesday, the House Agriculture Committee voted to approve a $940 billion farm bill, a day after the Senate passed its version, setting the stage for Congress to finally begin work on a new five-year bill.

The vote was 36 to 10, with mostly Democrats voting against the bill after nine hours of debate.

Efforts to pass a farm bill last year failed when House leaders refused to bring their version of the bill to the floor for a vote. The Senate did pass its version. The most recent farm bill, which passed in 2008, was extended until Sept. 30.

The committee’s chairman, Representative Frank D. Lucas, Republican of Oklahoma, praised the efforts of the committee in passing the bill, but warned that there was still a lot of work ahead as the measure  headed to the full House. “I’m pleased the committee was able to work together, find some common ground, and advance a five-year farm bill today,” Mr. Lucas said.

The House bill cuts projected spending in farm and nutrition programs by nearly $40 billion over the next 10 years. Just over half, $20.5 million, would come from cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps. The Senate voted to cut spending by $23 billion, with $4.1 billion of the cuts coming from the food stamp program.

The House bill, like the Senate’s version, would eliminate direct payments to farmers, which are made annually whether they grow crops or not. Currently, farmers who grow corn, wheat, soybeans, cotton and other crops receive about $5 billion in direct payments. Billions of dollars saved by eliminating direct payments would be directed into other subsidy programs, including crop insurance and new subsidies for peanut, cotton and rice farmers.

The House, like the Senate, basically left the sugar program alone, keeping price supports and restrictions on imports intact. The bill adds money to support fruit and vegetable growers. It also restores insurance programs for livestock producers, which expired in 2001, leaving thousands of operations without disaster coverage last year during the worst drought in 50 years.

The House farm bill passed the committee with strong bipartisan support but exposed a division among committee members over the size of cuts to the food stamp program, which has long been a target of conservatives.

Hoping to get more Republicans to support the bill, Mr. Lucas and Collin C. Peterson, Democrat of Minnesota and ranking member on the committee, increased the amount of the cuts by $4 billion from $16 billion in last year’s bill.

Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts, and a number of other Democrats on the committee offered an amendment that would have restored proposed cuts to the food stamp program. That amendment was defeated 27 to 17. The vote was largely along party lines, although Mr. Peterson, along with two other Democrats, voted against the amendment.

Cuts to the food stamp program was hotly debated, with members quoting Bible verses to support keeping the food stamp programs at current levels or cutting it.

Representative Juan C. Vargas, Democrat of California, who opposes cuts to the food stamp program, began the thread by quoting a biblical passage from the 25th chapter of the Book of Matthew.

“I’m a Christian, and this chapter talks about how you treat the least among us,” said Mr. Vargas, adding that he would not support a bill that made such deep cuts to the antihunger program.

But K. Michael Conaway, a Texas Republican, countered that argument. “I take umbrage to that,” he said. “I take Matthew 25 to mean me as an individual, not the U.S. government.“

Representative Stephen Fincher, Republican of Tennessee, then quoted a Bible verse from the 26th chapter of Matthew, saying the “poor will always be with us” in his defense of cuts to the food stamps program. Mr. Fincher said obligations to take care of the poor should be left to churches, not the government.

“Christians, Jews Muslims, whatever â€" we are failing our sisters and brothers,” Mr. McGovern shot back.

A report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan Washington research group, said the cuts in the food stamp program would eliminate two  million people from the program, most of them children and older people. The report said the cuts would come in addition to a reduction that food stamp recipients would experience starting Nov. 1., when benefits that were increased under the 2008 economic stimulus expire.

“Placing the SNAP cuts in this farm bill on top of the benefit cuts that will take effect in November is likely to put substantial numbers of poor families at risk of food insecurity,” the report said.

Senate leaders announced Wednesday that they would begin work on their $955 billion farm bill next Monday. House leaders have not set a timetable.

On Capitol Hill, Sanford Picks Up Where He Left Off

In some ways, Mark Sanford, the newly elected Republican representative from South Carolina, felt as if he had never left Capitol Hill.

“I walked in and C-SPAN was on, with John Mica talking,” Mr. Sanford said, referring to Representative John Mica, Republican of Florida, with whom Mr. Sanford served in Congress during his first spin through the House in the 1990s. “Is it 13 years or is it just one minute?”

His return to Congress, Mr. Sanford concluded, was “sort of surreal.”

Surreal, indeed.

Mr. Sanford arrived in Washington on Wednesday as a congressman-elect, having defeated Elizabeth Colbert Busch, a Democratic businesswoman and older sister of the comedian Stephen Colbert, in a special election last week. In 2009, as governor of South Carolina, Mr. Sanford had found himself embroiled in a scandal when news broke that, rather than hiking the Appalachian Trail as he’d claimed, he had been in Argentina, engaged in an extramarital affair with María Belén Chapur.

At first, he said, he thought his career in politics was over. But when his former Congressional seat, in South Carolina’s first district, opened up recently, he re-entered politics and embarked on a rehabilitation tour â€" and won. He will retain his seniority in Congress, a boon when it comes to committee assignments.

On Wednesday, Mr. Sanford enjoyed a relaxed homecoming of sorts, with well-wishers offering him handshakes and congratulations as he made his way around the Congressional complex. In the afternoon, he joined roughly four dozen friends, family members and supporters at his House office, where the group gathered before heading outside for a photo on the steps of the Capitol.

In his office, Mr. Sanford dashed about, chatting with his sons â€" the older two had come to Washington for the occasion â€" and making introductions.

“There’s a great military guy â€" let me go find him,” he told two supporters, heading off in search of a military friend.

Later, he said to a different group of men, “You all are both in the world of commercial real estate.”

All afternoon, Mr. Sanford had been serving as a delighted, if slightly bewildered, tour guide, gamely rallying his merry crowd of supporters and turning to his aides to ask for guidance and further instructions. (“We’re following Raul,” he exalted at one point, gesturing to a staffer named Raul. “Everybody got it? All right, off we go!”)

When it was time for his swearing-in, Mr. Sanford personally thanked his friends â€" old and new, he said â€" many of whom had traveled from South Carolina to be with him.

“Stuff’s going to start happening pretty fast right now, so I just want to say thank you,” he said.

And then, he was off â€" though, like a dutiful leader, he continued to look back to make sure the rest of his group was in tow. First up was the ceremonial swearing-in, where Mr. Sanford was joined by Ms. Chapur (now his fiancée), his mother, his two sons, his sister and her husband â€" not to mention a healthy gaggle of reporters.

From there, he wandered into the Speaker’s Lobby, where a Republican aide worried, “We might want to get him somewhere other than surrounded by reporters.” Mr. Sanford was promptly ushered onto the House floor.

But the aide need not have fretted. The South Carolina delegation joined Mr. Sanford, whose official swearing-in was remarkably uneventful. As his family and friends looked on from the balcony, Mr. Sanford told his assembled colleagues that he stood before them “more appreciative than I ever could have been,” and thanked “the people of South Carolina, who have taught me a whole lot about love and humility, wisdom and grace.”

With that, Mr. Sanford was officially, again, a member of Congress, right back where he’d started more than a decade ago.

At Hearing, Holder Calls Issa’s Accusations ‘Shameful’

The possibility of contentious moments during the testimony of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. at a House subcommittee hearing on Wednesday already seemed high, coming just days after the administration faced anger over seizures of journalists’ records. However, the tensest exchange of the hearing seemed to catch both Mr. Holder and members of the House Judiciary Committee’s oversight panel off guard, and ended with Mr. Holder calling a congressman’s behavior “shameful.”

Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican, played a telephone voice recording that he said was of Thomas E. Perez, the assistant attorney general for civil rights and President Obama’s nominee for labor secretary. Mr. Issa intimated that the recording was evidence that the nominee had covered up as a “quid pro quo” and demanded the contents of e-mails from Mr. Perez.

“I’m sure there was a good reason why the content of the e-mails was not released,” Mr. Holder said.

Mr. Issa scoffed and said the content was not released because Mr. Holder did not want it public.

At that, Mr. Holder snapped back at what he said was an unwarranted and public ascribing of motives that was “too consistent with the way you conduct yourself as a member of Congress. It is unacceptable and it is shameful.”

Mr. Issa, as the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, had subpoenaed records about Mr. Perez’s role in a deal with the city of St. Paul to drop a housing discrimination lawsuit in exchange for the Justice Department’s declining to join two whistle-blower complaints against the city.

At Hearing, Holder Calls Issa’s Accusations ‘Shameful’

The possibility of contentious moments during the testimony of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. at a House subcommittee hearing on Wednesday already seemed high, coming just days after the administration faced anger over seizures of journalists’ records. However, the tensest exchange of the hearing seemed to catch both Mr. Holder and members of the House Judiciary Committee’s oversight panel off guard, and ended with Mr. Holder calling a congressman’s behavior “shameful.”

Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican, played a telephone voice recording that he said was of Thomas E. Perez, the assistant attorney general for civil rights and President Obama’s nominee for labor secretary. Mr. Issa intimated that the recording was evidence that the nominee had covered up as a “quid pro quo” and demanded the contents of e-mails from Mr. Perez.

“I’m sure there was a good reason why the content of the e-mails was not released,” Mr. Holder said.

Mr. Issa scoffed and said the content was not released because Mr. Holder did not want it public.

At that, Mr. Holder snapped back at what he said was an unwarranted and public ascribing of motives that was “too consistent with the way you conduct yourself as a member of Congress. It is unacceptable and it is shameful.”

Mr. Issa, as the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, had subpoenaed records about Mr. Perez’s role in a deal with the city of St. Paul to drop a housing discrimination lawsuit in exchange for the Justice Department’s declining to join two whistle-blower complaints against the city.

Myanmar’s President to Visit White House

Myanmar’s president, U Thein Sein, will visit the White House on May 20, another step in the warming of relations between the United States and the military regime that rules Myanmar, once known as Burma.

President Obama made a landmark visit to Myanmar in November, and the White House, in its announcement, said Mr. Thein Sein’s visit was in recognition of the democratic reforms undertaken by his government.

“The president looks forward to discussing with President Thein Sein the many remaining challenges to efforts to develop democracy, address communal and ethnic tensions, and bring economic opportunity to the people of his country, and to exploring how the United States can help,” the White House said in a statement.

The military government in Myanmar has embarked on a range of reforms, releasing political prisoners, most prominently Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the long-detained pro-democracy leader who is now working with the government.

But human rights advocates said that after a promising start, the government has failed to follow through on many of its pledges. They criticize the timing of the trip, saying it rewards Mr. Thien Sien prematurely.

The Early Word: Spreading

In Today’s Times

• An inspector general blamed ineffective Internal Revenue Service management for failing to stop employees from singling out conservative groups for added scrutiny, with investigators still trying to determine if the issue branched out into other parts of the Obama administration, Jonathan Weisman reports.

• House Republicans will charge forward on a vote to repeal President Obama’s health care law this week, the 37th time they will have attempted to eliminate or curtail the legislation or take away its funding. But that figure still understates the amount of time Republicans have devoted to trying to dismantle the president’s biggest legislative accomplishment, Jeremy W. Peters reports.

• Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and his deputy, James M. Cole, on Tuesday defended the Justice Department’s sweeping seizure of telephone records of The Associated Press, saying an A.P. article “put the American people at risk,” Charlie Savage and Scott Shane report.

Happenings in Washington

• President Obama will deliver remarks at the National Peace Officers Memorial Service, an annual ceremony honoring law enforcement personnel who were killed on the job in the previous year.

• Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will meet with Prime Minister Ivica Dacic of Serbia in the White House.