A Rocky Road for the Farm Bill

Apparently two sets of hurdles for the farm bill:

• one is the fight over the provisions in the bill, most notably the tightened work requirements for SNAP, but also other issues.
• the other is its status as close to must-pass legislation (it's not really must-pass--Congress could always kick the issue down the road by doing a one-year extension of the current farm bill.  But Congress doesn't have much going on, so the farm bill is the best bet to use for leverage on other issues, like the quest for a vote on immigration legislation.  That's what resulted in today's defeat of the bill.