Farm bill: 'Gridlock rooted in greed'

by Stephen J. Hedges

The $286 billion Farm Bill of 2007 is slowly becoming the 2008 farm bill.

Even though the House and Senate passed farm bills in 2007, they haven't yet produced a compromise piece of legislation for President Bush to sign - or veto, as he has threatened.

Congress already extended funding for the 2002 farm bill once this year, but that extension expires Friday. The House and Senate passed one-week funding extensions Wednesday and Thursday, but Bush, upset over the high level of farm subsidies and other farm bill provisions, has threatened to veto that as well.

Despite those impending deadlines, Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who chairs the Senate Committee on Agriculture, twice postponed and then finally cancelled a meeting of Senate and House conferees Thursday so they could meet privately to discuss possible solutions.

Harkin's decision came after three days of public conference meetings in a room of the Hart Senate office building. The conference room, filled with conferees, their legislative aides, lobbyists and reporters, has taken on the look of a junior high school lock-in.

The farm bill, which comes up about every five years, is a powerful piece of legislation because it affects much more than farms. It funds nutrition programs like food stamps, foreign food aide, environmental and energy programs, and it sets farm policy and spending priorities through 2012. A wide variety of industry and non-governmental organizations are pressing for it to pass.

The heart of the bill, though, are its controversial direct farm subsidy payments, which puts thousands of dollars in farmers' pockets simply for owning land and growing crops. The total amount for those "direct payment" subsidies in the current bill is about $26 billion. Efforts to cut the subsidies failed in both the House and Senate, a testament to the political influence the subsidies garner.

"I don't know if there's any other explanation for the delay than a gridlock rooted in greed," said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, which opposed farm subsidies. "There's plenty of money in this bill right now."

There are several hang-ups in the farm bill right now, all involving lots of money. The stickiest is a bid by the Senate to insert $2.5 billion in tax incentives for conservation, energy efficiency measures and, more controversially, for race horse ownership. House members don't want the taxes, and so far they've successfully kept them out of the bill.

Another obstacle is a Senate provision that provides crop disaster relief. It was proposed by two Democratic Senators, Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Max Baucus of Montana, but it's not popular for several reasons.

First, some in Congress feel that it's tailor made to benefit Conrad and Baucus' states, both large wheat producers that experience frequent crop failures due drought. Second, the funding for the measure is uncertain. It was supposed to come from the Senate Finance Committee, which Baucus chairs. But some conferees are leery of letting a non-agriculture committee have a piece of the farm bill.

Faced with the funding deadline, the Senate and House members could resolve their differences overnight and announce a final farm bill Friday. House members, who normally would be returning to their districts Friday, have been asked to stay in town until the afternoon, when they'll be free to go home and explain what hasn't happened with the 2007 farm bill.