Volume XVIII No. 28:

Remember a couple weeks ago we told you that despite the House rejecting a trillion dollar farm bill that the subsidy apologists would be back? Unfortunately, we were right, and they came with a stealth attack. At about 8 PM on Wednesday, House Republican leadership announced an emergency session of the Rules Committee—to begin at 9 PM—to come up with a plan to debate an “agriculture-only” farm bill, jettisoning the nutrition portion. What commenced over the next 20 hours or so was one of the most undemocratic and saddest spectacles from our current kick-the-can Congress.

We’re more than fine with considering nutrition programs and agriculture programs separately. If members are allowed to debate and reform each on their own merits, it’s actually the best way to get common sense reforms to outdated agricultural programs. But instead of taking two steps forward, House Republicans stepped backward by bringing up the bill under a “closed” rule, which means no amendments. No real debate. Just a rubber stamp. So that meant no discussion about stopping checks to millionaire farmers, or limits on the subsidies any one farm could receive. No chance to stop newly created business income entitlement programs included in the bill. Sad.

Leadership argued this was the same portions of the amended bill that failed last month. Except it wasn’t. Yes, they repealed archaic and wasteful permanent law that dated back to 1949. Good. But under the cover of darkness, they had conveniently deleted nearly all the lines that would “sunset” these new changes in 2018. So they not only created new income guarantee entitlements, revived Moscow-on-the-Potomac government-set target prices, loaded up with new special interest carve-outs, and expanded already overly generous crop insurance subsidies, they made these market distorting subsidies the new “permanent law.” Really, really bad. House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-OK) wanted to lock in record farm income and these extravagant subsidies in perpetuity without any trigger to regularly review them. It’s waste on auto-pilot.

With only a couple hours to review these sweeping changes, and some staffers not knowing they’d happened until we told them, too many lawmakers took the bait, and the 600-plus page bill passed less than 24 hours after it appeared. But Leadership couldn’t even get a majority of the House (218), and the bill passed 216-208. Every Democrat and 12 brave Republicans voted no for a bill that spends more than the ag-only provisions in the Senate farm bill, saves less than half what Republicans agreed to in their House Budget, and falls short of the cuts called for in the President’s budget request.

What happens next is not worth betting on. House Republicans are promising a vote on a nutrition-only bill, but with such differing opinions on what the right spending level is, it will be an uphill battle. Even if this happens before Congress jets out of town for August break, it’s difficult to imagine how House and Senate conferees then merge the disparate bills into something palatable for a Republican-controlled House, Democrat-controlled Senate, and ultimately President Obama. A more probable scenario may be a repeat of last year – an extension of the expiring (again) 2008 farm bill law – if politics and special interests get in the way of real reform.

Either way, Congress needs to do something upon which nearly everyone agrees – immediately and completely eliminate the failed Average Crop Revenue Election (ACRE) program and outdated direct payments which go out regardless of farm income, crop prices, or how many acres you farm. That would save taxpayers $50 billion right there. Then lawmakers need to do their homework, go back to the whiteboard, and come up with a more cost-effective, accountable, responsive, and transparent farm safety net. Maybe taxpayers will finally get a fiscally responsible solution that makes long overdue reforms and begins to reduce our $16.8 trillion national debt.