Farm & Food File: Never-ending elections, farm bill fights and ‘emergency relief’

Election Day, Nov. 5, will end the costliest, dirtiest American political campaign season in memory and it will likely also mark Opening Day for what could be the costliest, dirtiest post-election fight in American history.

Hanging in the balance will be the White House, the House of Representatives and — unlikely yet still possible — the Senate.

And since the stakes of these ballot box and courtroom fights will be so very, very high, so too will be their fervor and deceit.

While all of this plays out, the now two-times-delayed 2024 farm bill remains captive to all the election engineering.

The bipartisan House version, pushed through by GOP Ag Chair Glenn Thompson last May, sits unmoved in what forecasters predict will soon be the Dem-controlled, lame-duck Senate.

Currently, there are no signs that Senate Ag Chair — and probable chief lame duck — Debbie Stabenow is ready to finish the bill before she retires to Michigan in early January.

Meanwhile, the Senate Ag’s ranking Republican, Arkansan John Boozman, Stabenow’s likely successor if the GOP retakes the upper chamber, holds a strong hand to pull the ever-weakening Stabenow into one — maybe two — lame-duck-session ag deals.

First, Stabenow, who reads the same gloomy Dem polls that Boozman happily reads, also knows if she’s to have any of her ideas included in any farm bill, she needs to act quickly and boldly during the November-December lame-duck period.

That will be a tough steak for her to chew because she has steadfastly opposed the House bill’s deep, $30-billion cuts to food assistance programs and its substantial boost to income-supporting reference prices.

Still, if there’s a deal to be done with House negotiators — say, a midpoint on each element — Stabenow might take her half and walk away with a lukewarm compromise.

Compounding any simple deal, however, is who wins the House majority. If the GOP keeps, or builds on, its slim, two-vote control, any lame-duck deal might become a dead duck because Republicans, in control of both the Senate and the House in early 2025, would have zero incentive to bargain with Stabenow in late 2024.

Then again, if today’s congressional roles reverse — a Democratic-controlled House and a Republican-led Senate — the current farm bill stalemate might continue well into the new year.

That’s where Boozman’s second card may come in handy. Since early September, Senate Republicans have been pushing for “emergency farm relief” to counter the delayed farm bill and this year’s stumbling farm income.

In mid-October, Trent Kelly, a Republican House Ag member from Mississippi, presented a formal bill — named FARM: the Farm Assistance and Revenue Mitigation Act — that looks to give farmers about $20 billion in direct income assistance this year.

It’s a political crowbar Boozman, a skilled legislator, knows how to use. For example, soon after Nov. 5 Boozman might say to his about-to-depart Democratic counterpart, “Would you like to compromise on the farm bill now or shall we just wait while you pack your bags and then write a new one — ours — when I get the gavel?”

Any hesitation on her part might encourage Boozman, the favorite to chair the committee in two months, to add, “Oh, by the way, Madame Chairman, we have the votes to pass the FARM Act now, too.”

And it’s a good bet that he does. After all, “the response to the proposed FARM Act has been positive, with large farm organizations such as the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Corn Growers Association and the American Soybean Association in support of it,” Farm Journal reported Oct. 22.

Of course, they are “in support of it” because, with the bitter campaign over, all its talk about government overspending will be over, too.