Inside D.C.

Super committee failure; smiling aggies

Far be it from me to accuse anyone in agriculture of being self-serving.  However, having now attested to this salt-of-the earth characteristic of the average aggie,  I have to say, it’s tough this week to find a national commodity group rep who isn’t grinning from ear to ear when you bring up the failure of the Special Select Joint Deficit Reduction Committee’s failure to whack $23 billion out of ag spending over the next 10 years.

It’s not that ag doesn’t want to see a reduced federal deficit and a balanced budget; we’ve been giving ‘til it hurts for the last few years. But the community is by and large grateful our hit in the mandated across-the-board federal spending reductions slated for 2013 is likely something south of $15 billion, a number a lot of folks seem ready to live with.

I’m also going to assert there’s more than just dollar sign relief behind those grinning aggies, there’s a collective “thank you” to the Farm Bill gods that the process will effectively begin anew. Everyone gets a chance to go back and reexamine all of those quickly cobbled together reinventions of farm programs – all pegged to some kind of hybridized federally subsidized income insurance – taking time to flesh them out, and perhaps reconsider parts or entire reinventions now that the spending baseline has come up a bit and there are a host of other programs against which parochial approaches can be compared.

We can pretty much bet the “triplet approach” fashioned out of whole cloth by ag committee chairs Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D, MI) and Rep. Frank Lucas (R, OK) is going into the round file. No one likes their “one from column A, one from column B, one from column C’ menu approach, an honorable, but unsuccessful attempt to balance regional and commodity demands.

So, it’s back to regional and Washington, DC hearings, complete with the naïve production program/income security/land use/environmental demands of the tree hugging set, animal rights and consumer groups, and then we start drafting our brains out so that we can hit a February deadline for a bill to which folks can formally react. This is called writing a Farm Bill under “regular order,” which also makes those 28 House members who accused Stabenow and Lucas of writing a “secret Farm Bill” as part of the super committee process so very happy.

And its “regular order” which also takes the bloom off the rose, so to speak, for those grinning aggies. Unlike in years past, where we had a hint of urban animosity toward farm bill spending, this upcoming spin down the Farm Bill superhighway is going to be very bumpy all because of the potholes that are future budget/spending cuts.

The only part of the super committee process that warmed the hearts of Farm Bill veterans was the protection the bill would have enjoyed once it hit the floor. Had the bill been written and brought to the floor, only harsh words could be leveled against it, no amendments could have been offered. Now, “regular order” means the finished Farm Bill, whenever it hits the floor, will be a monster target for spending hawks, anti-corporate farming types, save-the-family-farm folks, and so on.

And we should not look to the House GOP leadership to protect the Farm Bill from the assaults that are sure to come no matter how fiscally conservative the bill may or may not be. House Speaker John Boehner (R, OH), when he was a member of the House Agriculture Committee, was an ardent and vocal critic of farm program payments of any sort. It’s fair to say he hated all of the programs, with special animus to the cotton program, the sugar program, and dairy programs. He’s pledged all major legislation brought to the floor during his tenure as speaker will enjoy an “open rule.” That means any and all amendments – no matter how bizarre – will be allowed. To give you an idea how this works, during the FY2011 appropriations battle, the “open rule” applied; over 400 amendments were filed, more than 175 debated and voted upon, and it took nearly a week to finish.

So, are we all still smiling?