To the purported short­list of certainties in life — death and taxes — add large, bipartisan support for the farm bill in the Senate.

Despite the recent pattern in recent years of intense partisan acrimony, backroom bickering and publicly staged fights over nearly every piece of legislation, the Senate has begun to plod through a nearly $1 trillion farm bill that promises to yield a large bipartisan vote for its approval by week’s end.

If the coalition of northern and western senators holds together through dozens of amendments this week, it will mark a second large vote for a substantial piece of legislation for the polarized Senate in the past three months. In late March, 74 senators, a majority of both Democrats and Republicans, supported a bill to continue the program that funds the federal highway and bridge construction program.

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