Farm Bill Update: Next Stop, Senate Floor

The SF Chronicle published a story, written by Carolyn Lochhead in the DC bureau, today on the status of the 2007 Farm Bill. Last week the Senate Agriculture Committee approved a bill Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) put together. His bill is similar to the one the U.S. House approved over the summer in that it places a few new restrictions on farm subsidies and adds some new spending on organic agriculture and school food programs, but doesn't constitute wholesale reform.

There will be two major attempts to amend the bill on the floor next week, one by farm state senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and the other by Dick Lugar (R-IN), himself a farmer, and Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ). As best I can tell, the Grassley-Dorgan amendment would represent a step back. Their measure seems to try to limit farm subsidies to the largest farms, but purposely avoids substantial reform of the system. I think their approach is far worse than Senator Harkin's mediocre bill and the House bill. The Lugar-Lautenberg proposal, however, would scrap the whole subsidy system and replace it will a farm insurance program for which all farmers would be eligible. Without seeing the full details, the Lugar-Lautenberg proposal seems preferable to me as a way of ending the unfair and unequal farm subsidies while continuing some form of crop insurance for farmers who hit hard times.

My guess is that both proposals will fail and the Senate will adopt Senator Harkin's bill. So, despite some tweaking to reduce the amount of farm subsidies and the addition of modest federal support for organic agriculture and better school food programs, not much will change and the bill will become law.

What's interesting to me about Lochhead's article is that she points out that neither of California's senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, both Democrats, (full disclosure: I was a staffer in D.C. for Senator Feinstein in the early 1990s) have taken a public position on the bill. I'm not exactly sure why that is. Both senators have strong environmental records. Feinstein has been an effective advocate for public lands and for land preservation in general and she can claim credit for spearheading legislation to set aside major portions the California dessert as protected land. She also brokered the deal to preserve the salt flats in the southern portion of San Francisco Bay. Boxer is the Chairperson of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and has worked hard on several environmental measures and has also steadily voiced concerns about climate change issues.

Given that California is the nation's largest agricultural producer, it does seem strange that neither one of them has yet to advocate for (or against) the bill or any of the alternative proposals. In addition to constituent farmers, they also have to contend with a reasonably active food reform movement that is mostly based in the Bay Area, but also has a few voices and followers in Los Angeles. A further complicating factor is that the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, is also a Californian (she's my congressperson in San Francisco) and she is the person who signed off on the deal in the House that made only minor changes and that has become the base for Harkin's bill.

My guess is that Feinstein and Boxer will both tow the moderate line here and oppose the Grassley-Dorgan amendment, vote for the Lugar-Lautenberg amendment even though it will fail, and then vote for the unamended Harkin bill, which is basically Nancy Pelosi's House bill. We'll see.

If you care about this, it's probably worth contacting your senators and encouraging them to vote for the Lugar-Lautenberg measure and against the Grassley-Dorgan amendment. Assuming both will fail, then urge them to vote for the final bill.

Welcome to congressional politics!