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The Senate Agriculture Committee failed to advance this year’s farm bill out of committee on Thursday amid Republican absences and unified Democratic opposition to the bill’s food aid provisions. 

The vote failed 10-11 along party lines. Proxy votes from GOP Sens. Tommy Tuberville (AL) and Mitch McConnell (KY), who were both absent, did not count toward the official vote tally. 

The farm bill is a sprawling agriculture and food aid package normally passed every five years. Congress has not passed a farm bill since 2018. The House  in April.

The panel’s chair, Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.), announced that he would reconvene the committee when the Senate returned from recess in September to reconsider the package. 

In a statement shared on social media after the vote, Boozman said he was “deeply disappointed” by the Democratic lawmakers who voted against the bill.

Democrats on the panel have  against a provision in the bill that would require states to help cover the cost of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funding, demanding that the implementation date be delayed by two years to allow states to reduce SNAP error rates.

Boozman has offered a one-year delay, but the panel’s Democrats said this was not enough time. 

“This debate was about the FARM BILL, not protecting the mismanagement of billions of dollars in food aid,” the chair said in his statement. “I remain committed to working with those who put our farmers and rural communities first on advancing solutions that strengthen agriculture.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), the ranking member on the committee, said in a statement after the vote that she remains “committed” to working with Boozman on this legislation. 

The Democrat has said that the farm bill would unfairly reward states with high SNAP error rates while penalizing states with mid-level error rates. 

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