The farm bill has a very narrow window for passage before the painful 1949 law catches up to Americans in the grocery store.
The first provision to take effect in permanent farm law from the 1930s and ’40s, which each new farm bill suspends, requires sharply higher dairy supports. With higher supports come higher retail milk prices, and without intervention, sticker shock in the dairy aisle was set to take effect January 1.
“I’ve heard [Agriculture] Secretary [Tom] Vilsack mention that folks should not be surprised if he is not going to flip a switch and automatically January 1, provisions of permanent law kick in,” American Farm Bureau Executive Director Dale Moore says. Vilsack appears to be taking as much time to reintroduce permanent law as is possible under the law.
The House voted for an extension of the 2008 farm law through January, which would have suspended permanent law, but the Senate did not play along.
“We have been encouraged by the signals coming from the four principals of the conference,” Moore adds, referring to Senate Ag Chair and Ranking Member Debbie Stabenow and Thad Cochran respectively, and their House colleagues, House Ag Chair Frank Lucas and House Ag Ranking Member Collin Peterson. “They feel they’ve made some real progress on some of the tougher issues in the commodity title,” Moore says, “and as we understand it, on the SNAP program.”
Agreement between conference leaders only gets the farm bill so far. Every conferee has to vote in order for the committee to produce what’s called a conference report. That report then must pass both the Senate and House without amendment, and it’s not unlikely that the latter could impede passage over modest food stamp cuts and reuniting food assistance with farm programs.
The final leg is clearly uphill, but Moore says there’s a window before the President’s State of the Union address. Normally activity on Capitol Hill is almost nonexistent before the address, but with both chambers still hammering out a budget deal, Moore thinks it wouldn’t be unrealistic for the farm bill to see floor time mid-January.
If that’s not the case, both chambers will have to scramble to pass a longer extension; both Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senator Stabenow are staunchly opposed to another farm bill extension of any kind. And if a farm bill deal fails to pass both chambers, Americans could see the full, and ugly, permanent law that hasn’t governed agriculture policy since the mid-1900s.
