Congressional committee failure meant death of negotiated Farm Bill
First in a series
exploring the Farm Bill debate - where it's been and where
If the so-called "super committee" in Congress had been able to complete its assignment, we would already have a new Farm Bill.
Though the process was secretive, many observers believed that the super committee process offered the best chance to get a deal for agriculture - even though cuts were deep.
With the failure of that process, many in agriculture fear unending floor debates could cripple attempts to get a Farm Bill done this year. In the House of Representatives, the current "open" rules mean that any member can offer amendments.
This could results in hundreds of additional items to be debated in the House.
Mary Kay Thatcher, the top lobbyist for the American Farm Bureau, had hoped there would be new farm policy before the end of last year.
She believed there was an 80 percent chance that the bi-partisan Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction was going to succeed in getting its job done and with it would come a new Farm Bill.
That group, dubbed the super committee, was charged with reducing the federal budget by $1.2 trillion. Congressional ag leaders had agreed to $23 billion in cuts to federal agriculture programs to help get the super committee to its goals.
Once that panel gave up without reaching an agreement, however, the outlines of the agreed-upon farm policies were sealed.
The secrecy of the whole super committee process is not the way anyone really wanted to craft farm legislation, she told Wisconsin Farm Bureau members at their recent annual meeting, but was necessary given the extremely tight timeline that was part of the super committee process.
Darin Von Ruden, a Westby dairy farmer who is president of Wisconsin Farmers Union, said the whole process was frightening.
"The process was compressed from what would normally be about 18 months with lots of hearings to just six or eight weeks and it just involved the leadership. It was scary that we didn't have any say in how it was going to happen," he said.
"Now at least we have the opportunity to make our voices heard," since the process has reverted to a more "normal" form, says Von Ruden.
He believes that if a new Farm Bill has any chance to get passed this year, it will have to happen in the first three or four months, before the presidential campaign kicks into high gear.
Farm Bill - Election Year
"Historically there's never been a Farm Bill passed in an election year," he said, but some Congressional leaders he's talked to said they are determined to try to get it done.
Dr. Joe Outlaw, a professor and Extension economist at Texas A&M University, worked very closely with Congressional leaders on analyzing policies that were going into the potential Farm Bill during the super committee's work.
The way that process happened last fall "had nothing to do with getting it done in secret. It had everything to do with getting it done without a floor vote," he said.
"It's going to be a huge mess trying to do the Farm Bill on the House floor."
Since the super committee process failed he's concerned "we could have a Farm Bill with no safety net for producers. Too many people do not like protecting producers with a safety net."
Speaking in Madison last week to a group of farm leaders, he said he had "very frequent interaction" with the chief economist of the Agriculture Committee.
"The Farm Bill was ready. Done. In process," he said. But now that the process goes back to normal rules, the "people who feel they were shut out of the super committee process are going to want to be heard."
Outlaw, a veteran of farm level policy analysis, is co-director of the Agriculture and Food Policy Center at Texas A&M University. Started in 1983, the AFPC analyzes the impacts of government policy on farmers, agribusiness, the taxpayer and consumers.
Most of the center's work is done with Congress - especially the agriculture committees. Throughout the super committee process, when the Farm Bill was being fashioned, Outlaw said he responded to numerous requests for analysis - even in the middle of the night.
Outlaw said the center works with representative farms all over the country - dairy farms in Wisconsin, grain farms in Iowa and Indiana, for example. Those farms provide information that the economists use to run their models to determine the effect proposed farm programs may have.
Their mission, he said, is to boil down proposals and their impacts for a very small audience, usually Congressional aides, who will have a major impact on shaping farm policy.
What he saw during last fall's process convinced him of certain changes that will be made when a new Farm Bill gets done.
Crop insurance to be safety net
"I firmly believe that the future of the old safety net protections will be in crop insurance," says Outlaw, who believes Congress will decide to subsidize that insurance at higher than current levels.
There are also some programs that he believes will be gone.
The ACRE program - an acronym for Average Crop Revenue Election - was favored by corn, soybean and wheat commodity organizations, said Outlaw.
But he feels that program will be ended with a new farm policy bill. "It's dead. It absolutely won't happen again."
Both Outlaw and Farm Bureau's Thatcher said the various commodity groups had their own ideas about what kind of program they wanted to have and none of them were willing to work together to find common ground.
Outlaw and others in the farm policy debate are predicting that the direct payment program will also be dead. Many farm lobbyists and legislative activists see the direct payment as a target just waiting for lawmakers to take a shot at.
But how the process will shake out depends on politics. Outlaw said that he sees the current political process as "very, very dysfunctional."
Now when he's asked to do policy briefings he can figure on doubling the number - one for the Democrats and one for the Republicans. At each briefing he'll be asked "what did you tell the other guys?" he said.
His reading on the Tea Party is that its members believe the federal government "doesn't need to spend any money on anything."
The economist said he has made an expensive dinner bet that the Farm Bill won't get done until 2013, but Congress will try to get it done this year. Outlaw predicts that if it isn't done by May - in a presidential election year - it won't get done.
"Congress won't do anything of any consequence after May."
The super committee was supposed to be able to achieve results because if it didn't, onerous consequences were in store - so-called sequestration.
That means huge cuts in programs to displease both parties. Outlaw says that now the same people who put the super committee process in place are sitting around trying to figure out how to get away with not following through on sequestration.
