By Catharine Richert and Alan K. Ota, CQ Staff

Hours after the House voted overwhelmingly to override a farm bill veto, leaders agreed that a paperwork snag is forcing them to reconsider the bill again.

Lawmakers discovered Wednesday that one of the 14 titles of the bill (HR 2419) — the trade title that deals with foreign food aid, among other things — was inadvertently dropped from the version sent to President Bush. Bush vetoed the bill Wednesday and the House then voted, 316-108, to override, a tally that exceeded the needed two-thirds majority.

But that left lawmakers in a quandary about how to restore the missing title. Republicans questioned the constitutionality of a proposal to pass the dropped section separately, contending that it could open the entire farm bill to legal challenge.

After negotiations among top Democrats and Republicans and consultations with the House parliamentarian, Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer , D-Md., said the House would probably take up the full farm bill again Thursday under a new bill number, though it might just vote on the deleted title.

The Rules Committee agreed to allow a duplicate full farm bill to come to the floor under suspension of the rules. If the rule is adopted, no amendments or motions to recommit will be allowed.

“That’s what’s likely,” Hoyer said Wednesday evening.

Hoyer said he wanted to discuss the plan with Minority Leader John A. Boehner , R‑Ohio. With so much Republican support for the legislation, Hoyer said he doubted Boehner could block it.

“If he doesn’t like the bill, he can vote against the bill,” Hoyer said. “But 100 of his people liked the bill.”

If the Senate also passes a new bill, it would go back to Bush for the expected veto.

However, the delay could push another override vote past the Memorial Day recess and require Congress to enact another short-term extension of the current farm bill (PL 107-171) before leaving town Friday, when the current authorization expires.

The snag was the latest obstacle in the long and often politically charged battle over the nation’s agriculture policy for the next five years. For almost a year and a half now, lawmakers and the White House have battled over the necessity of crop subsidies, the feasibility of new nutrition funding and the merits of government intervention in the farming industry.

Those arguments are perennial, but high crop prices and the farm bill writers’ relatively tight $280 billion budget made them more contentious this year. Any new funding, lawmakers learned early on, would have to be offset with spending cuts or tax increases, an obstacle that ignited jurisdictional debates toward the end.

All along, the White House has objected to the bill. Bush has long said that Congress should cut crop supports to make farm programs more compliant with international trade rules.