The so-called “secret Farm Bill” did not move forward this month because the Joint Deficit Reduction “Super” Committee did not agree on their overall deficit-reduction bill. As such, House Ag Committee Chair Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) and Senate Ag Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) released only summaries of the secret Farm Bill, without the legislative details.
This week, House Ag Committee Ranking Member Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) – champion of National Milk’s Foundation for the Future -- suggested that the “secret” Farm Bill crafted by Lucas and Stabenow should be added to the “payroll tax relief bill”.
The Democrats and Republicans agree on extending the payroll tax relief. They disagree on how to pay for it. Democrats want to add a tax on millionaires, Republicans oppose this. Thus, the Senate Democrats are looking at spending offsets, and the Farm Bill they constructed for the failed super committee is back in play in the next two weeks.
Peterson (a Democrat) cajoled Republicans with this tantalizing idea of $23 billion in ag program cuts … just there for the taking… to fund the “payroll tax relief.”
It’s not clear whether the entire House Ag Committee of 46 members would first have to vote on that 2012 Farm Bill before it could be added to the payroll tax relief bill.
A more plausible course of action came in the words this week of Chairwoman Stabenow, who said Farm Bill hearings are expected to begin in January or February and that she hopes to have the 2012 Farm Bill marked up by April, using the work she and Lucas completed for the so-called Super Committee as a foundation.
Last fall, Chairman Lucas told an audience in his home state of Oklahoma that he was pushing for the Farm Bill to be accomplished through the Super Committee process because he was very concerned about the bill’s chances of getting enough votes in the current House of Representatives. Other than that, the House Chairman has been pretty quiet in regard to the Farm Bill.
Meanwhile on the Senate side… Ranking Member Pat Roberts (R-Kansas), openly criticized the process that constructed this “foundation.” He says he is looking forward to hearings and the normal subcommittee process for preparing the 2012 Farm Bill.
Subcommittee members and even chairs of the subcommittees had been virtually excluded from the process that produced the “secret” Farm Bill.
Perhaps Farm Bill long-timer and Republican Pat Roberts of Kansas should talk to fellow Farm Bill long-timer and Republican Richard Lugar of Indiana. It was Lugar – after all – who did the chairs a favor and wrote his own Farm Bill called the REFRESH Act.
Lugar’s REFRESH (Rural Economic Farm and Ranch Sustainability and Hunger) Act contains Peterson’s Dairy Security Act, also known as National Milk’s Foundation for the Future (with a few minor tweaks). Lugar’s REFRESH also contains a new “shallow loss” protection concept for crop farmers, and cuts heavily into Conservation programs.
Whether Lugar’s REFRESH is word-for-word what is contained in the “secret” Farm Bill remains to be seen. Judging by the summaries Lucas and Stabenow released on Nov. 18, it’s fair to say they pretty much used Lugar’s bill as their guide.
The current 2008 Farm Bill expires in September 2012. That means current dairy programs, like the Milk Income Loss Contract-MILC, are set to end in September.
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LIFE AFTER THE SUPER COMMITTEE... National Milk's Foundation for the Future (FFTF) still has legs. It is to some degree included in what the Senate and House Ag leaders sent on to the Super Committee as part of the "secret" farm bill. To look at DPAC's Senate Bill 1682 (Dairy Advancement Act), introduced by Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), in a side-by-side comparison with National Milk's FFTF program in Collin Peterson's Dairy Security Act (H.R. 3062) and in Sen. Lugar's REFRESH Act..click here
Super committee failure stops ‘secret’ farm bill in its tracks
By Sherry Bunting, Special for Farmshine
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The “secret” farm bill is dead.
Weeks of negotiation behind closed doors by the four members of House and Senate ag leadership had produced a 2012 farm bill sent for the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (super committee) last Friday, Nov. 18 that -- had it been included in an overall deficit reduction bill -- would have been virtually assured of passage.
But Friday’s accelerated farm bill came to a grinding halt Monday, Nov. 21, when the super committee announced its failure to reach a deal on the overall deficit reduction package into which the two ag chairs were hoping to see their fast farm bill inserted.
Super committee co-chairs -- Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) -- released a statement Monday, saying the 12-member Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction was unable to come to a bipartisan agreement on how to cut the deficit.
Had this super committee succeeded in reaching such an agreement on the overall bill, which was due this week to Congress for a potential no-amendments-allowed vote in December, sweeping changes to America’s Farm Bill would have included the language of Rep. Collin Peterson’s (D-Minn.) Dairy Security Act as slightly revised by Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) in his REFRESH Act.
In effect, National Milk Producers Federation’s (NMPF) Foundation for the Future (FFTF) would have become law because no ag committee members could have challenged it and no members on the floor could have offered amendments.
But it was not to be.
The super committee’s failure to reach bipartisan agreement on how to trim $1.2 trillion from the federal budget deficit over the next 10-year baseline was met with cheers and jeers from the press, political analysts, and rank-and-file Americans – depending where they sit on either side of the tax-or-cut fence.
Reports indicate the six Democrats on the super committee wanted to use increased revenue (taxes) as part of the deficit reduction package, while the six Republicans on the super committee wanted to use only spending cuts to trim the $1.2 trillion.
Statements by members included concerns about proposals that would have hurt U.S. job creation and would have introduced more government control in certain sectors of the U.S. economy.
For farmers and consumer groups who opposed the so-called Dairy Security Act (NMPF’s FFTF) and other aspects of the “secret” farm bill -- along with members of the House and Senate Ag Committees who found themselves virtually shut out of the process of crafting the package -- the super committee’s failure to come up with an overall bill puts the farm bill right back into the committee process for due diligence in 2012.
However, the farm bill framework has been laid out, but has not been scored as a package by the Congressional Budget Office.
Ag Committee chairs, Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) in the House and Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) in the Senate, released a joint statement Monday citing the super committee’s announcement as effectively ending their effort to produce an accelerated farm bill that would have cut $23 billion from ag program baselines over the next 10 years.
Stabenow and Lucas had released a title-by-title summary of their bipartisan, bicameral four-person-committee proposal last Friday, but have not released the actual legislative language because the super committee did not move forward with the overall deficit reduction bill.
“We will continue the process of reauthorizing the farm bill in the coming months, and will do so with the same bipartisan spirit that has historically defined the work of our committees,” said Stabenow and Lucas in Monday’s prepared statement.
The current farm bill, authorized a year late in 2008, will expire at the end of September 2012. The super committee’s failure to produce an overall deficit reduction bill by Thanksgiving, will prompt across-the-board cuts to all areas of the federal budget – including agriculture and defense – to begin in 2013.
In addition, 2012 is a re-election “funny season”. No telling how these factors will converge on the renewal of farm policy for the next five years. And it’s unclear how concrete the leadership’s prepared framework may be back in the hands of the respective subcommittees.
Perhaps the coming months will be a time to stop asking the federal government for farm commodity protection in dollars, and a time to speak up for “sense” instead.
Author’s note: From the local food movement (yes… it is real) to the dynamics of the global marketplace… future solutions could focus more on: providing tools, not handouts; developing products and markets to supply a hungry world, not shying away from international demand; assuring more timely and transparent market information, not false markets created by government regulations and formulas; encouraging opportunities for farmers to access markets and control their own destinies, not government-run systems that continue to phase out small family farms in the name of cheaper food.
And maybe, just maybe, federal dollars will be spent with greater accountability.
Maybe solutions will be offered to ease the burdensome rate of over-regulation so the United States of America can continue to thrive as growers of food and once again compete as makers of goods.
The dairy industry and all of agriculture is at a crossroads, and so is our nation. The events of the past few weeks and the coming year should not be taken lightly. They concern us all.
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