(CQ Today) -- The Senate on Wednesday passed a 30-day extension of the nation’s farm law to give bicameral negotiators more time to hammer out a deal on a long-term agriculture policy overhaul. “We can’t leave here without doing a farm bill,” said Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., agreed that the 30-day reprieve (S 2745) was needed. The House was expected to clear the extension later Wednesday. It would be the second stopgap measure since the last major farm bill was enacted in 2002. House-Senate negotiators have been working for months to reconcile competing versions of a new farm bill (HR 2419), and Reid said they were “making progress.” But their efforts have been slowed recently by the illness of House Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel, D-N.Y., who was hospitalized March 4 with flu-like symptoms and has not yet been discharged.
