Even as conservative groups are putting pressure on lawmakers to block the farm bill, Rep. Kristi Noem (R-S.D.) has taken a lead role in urging House leaders to bring the nearly trillion-dollar bill to a floor vote.

Noem, a rising GOP star who rode the tea party wave into Congress two years ago, was one of four featured speakers at a rally earlier this week to push for a "farm bill now," and yesterday she took to the House floor to continue to press the case in light of the drought. Later in the day, she was the third House member to sign a discharge petition filed by Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa) that would force a vote on the bill in the next few days.

"We cannot wait for the next disaster. We need to do our job," Noem told her colleagues yesterday. "We need to continue to provide for our families across this country that need affordable food policy."

Noem's position on the farm bill has put her in conflict with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who have yet to put the farm bill on their schedule this month before the current one expires Sept. 30, and with other conservative members of the House and right-leaning fiscal groups.

Yesterday, several of the leading fiscal groups, including Taxpayers for Common Sense and the American Enterprise Institute, sent a letter to Boehner urging him to ignore "politically motivated calls" to pass the legislation to help farmers suffering from the drought.

"The House and the Senate's trillion dollar farm bills will not make it rain, but their adoption will shower cash on a multitude of special interests," the 11 organizations wrote.

In an interview yesterday, Noem said she has not felt any tea party backlash for her calls to bring the bill to a floor vote.

She is, however, taking heat over the farm bill in a re-election race where, according to a poll taken about six weeks ago, she was 1 point ahead of challenger Matt Varilek (D), a former economic development director for Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.). Despite the poll, most handicappers believe she will win by a comfortable margin.

In the first debate of the race on Aug. 22, Varilek blamed Noem, a freshman liaison to the House leadership team, for failing to persuade Boehner to bring the bill to a floor vote.

"The House leadership chooses not to bring it up, and our one member of Congress is a member of that House leadership," Varilek said. "Now when she was elected to be the head of that freshman party class of tea party members and be their representative in leadership, she said that would give us more clout with John Boehner and more clout with those members. But in fact it's been the opposite."

Varilek has also hit Noem over her failure to attend meetings of the House Agriculture Committee, of which she is a member, and of caving to pressure from her leaders to back off her support for the farm bill.

Agriculture is South Dakota's No. 1 industry, and Noem herself comes from a farming background. She has been careful to place the blame elsewhere for the farm bill delay, pointing fingers both at Democrats for holding up the bill over food stamps and at other Republicans who do not like the sweeping farm legislation in general.

"We've got people who are walking away because of the reforms to the food stamps provision, but we've got some conservative Republicans who have just never voted for a farm bill before because they don't believe that's a role for the federal government," Noem said Wednesday. "So we've got a challenge, and we're going to keep working it and how it impacts everybody putting dinner on the table."

At the candidate debate over recess, Noem also strongly denied rumors that she had wavered on her decision to sign a discharge petition that would bring the farm bill to an automatic floor vote.

Later in August at a town hall meeting, Noem said that she voted against adjourning for the congressional five-week recess that began in August because of the leaders' failure to bring the farm bill to a floor vote; the House instead passed a drought relief bill that Senate leaders said they had no intention of taking up.

"That really didn't make me popular with my leadership team," Noem said of her vote. "But I really honestly felt that we need to make sure that we get our work done before we leave Washington."

Over the congressional recess, Noem and Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), one of the most liberal members in the chamber, circulated a letter to House leaders that urged them to bring the bill to the floor. Seventy-seven other House members signed on to the effort. Noem also penned a letter to President Obama, asking him to work with fellow Democrats to build support for the bill.

The farm bill is likely to continue playing a large role in the campaign. On Wednesday, the Varilek campaign released an agriculture-themed television ad accompanied by a statement that blamed Noem for "gridlock and inaction" in Washington.

There is still no clear path forward on the farm bill, despite the efforts of Noem, Welch and the lawmakers who participated in this week's rally outside the Capitol. House leaders have maintained that they don't have the 218 votes needed to ensure passage of the bill.

As of publishing time, 39 House members had signed the discharge petition; 218 signatures are also needed to successfully bring the bill to the floor.

The bill passed by the House Agriculture Committee in July has drawn fire both from liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans.

Led by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), a longtime advocate for nutrition programs, urban Democrats say the $16 billion cut the bill makes to food stamps is a hard pill to swallow.

On the other hand, conservative Republicans are pressing for the larger, $33 billion cut that was contained in the Republican budget, calling the farm bill a welfare measure.

Another point of contention that has been overshadowed by the food stamps debate is the commodity subsidy title. While both the House and Senate bills create a new revenue insurance program for farmers and eliminate direct subsidy payments, the House bill also retains a program that pays farmers when crop prices drop below a certain target.

Conservative critics say the House bill continues to subsidize farmers regardless of what the market dictates prices should be.

"When government begins picking winners and losers, begins subsidizing things, begins tinkering with that price structure," Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) said Wednesday, "it corrupts the data that consumers need to make accurate decisions in the marketplace so that capital flows to its highest and best and most productive use."

Other critics say the bill has simply become too big. Not only does it contain subsidy and nutrition programs but also a host of rural conservation, energy, organic and development programs. The House version overall would spend $958 billion over the next decade even after cutting $35 billion.

Most industry insiders blame politics for the delay in bringing the bill to the floor.

A failure of the GOP-controlled House to pass the bill after the Democratic-controlled Senate passed its version in a strong bipartisan vote could be cast negatively in the upcoming elections. At the same time, Republicans in favor of the bill could take heat for voting for such a massive piece of legislation -- and one labeled a welfare measure.

Noem said in her town hall meeting that the leadership does not want to bring the bill to the floor because if it fails, "the precedent that would set for ag policy in the future would be very detrimental."

At the rally Wednesday, Noem pushed leaders to bring the bill to a vote, though, regardless of the opposition.

"Frankly, I'm tired of excuses," she said.

Reporters Phil Taylor and Nick Juliano contributed.