Farm & Food File: First order of business is unfinished business

While the president-elect continues to nominate prospective members of his incoming administration, the outgoing Congress faces a hectic sprint to complete a long list of unmet legislative duties before their pre-Christmas adjournment.

And, despite post-election distractions and the fast-approaching holidays, GOP House members need to do as much as possible now before their skinny three-vote majority slips to two or even one as a trio of colleagues depart to serve in the Trump administration.

The biggest of these uncompleted big jobs is the not-yet passed federal budget. Congress bandaged the 2024-2025 funding fight with a continuing resolution, or CR, until Dec. 20 rather than enter a budget brawl just as the 2024 campaign season approached its stride in late September.

But the brawling season has returned and few Republicans want the still-hanging CR to be the Trump administration’s first fight in January. As such, most Capitol Hill watchers expect congressional leaders to agree to another CR sometime in the pre-Christmas rush.

The length of the CR, anticipated to continue through March, is vital to House GOP leaders because today’s thin majority — and 2025′s possibly even thinner majority — means next year’s House chamber could become legislative quicksand where lawmakers and lawmaking simply sink out of sight.

Now add in President-elect Donald Trump’s hope to extend his first administration’s tax cuts as early as next spring. The threat of that estimated $4.6 trillion to $5 trillion action will also weigh on already-bogged down House leaders in the coming few weeks.

Keep in mind, too, that while this looming, lengthy budget and tax cut fight rages in Washington, D.C., the president-elect’s two costliest and most echoed campaign initiatives — undocumented migrant deportation and import tariffs on American farmers’ three biggest markets: Mexico, China and Canada — will be biting deeply into the American economy.

And while Congress spends most of its time and goodwill on the money fights, the uncompleted farm bill continues its two-year search for renewal. Few see the must-pass CR as a path to implement the overdue law. Far more likely is a simple, one-year extension of the still-in-effect 2018 law.

In fact, according to the Dec. 2 Punchbowl, an insider’s peek at Capitol Hill action, “the House Republican leadership plans to attach a one-year extension to the CR.”

While that plan is “a suboptimal result for the House and Senate,” the report continues, clearing the CR legislation “will give Trump and the Republicans the opportunity — and challenge — of crafting a farm bill when they have the Washington trifecta,” the House, Senate and White House, “next year.”

That means that as the 2024 holidays near and pressure builds for the CR, there will be little energy for a new farm bill. But, adds Punchbowl, “there’s a chance that the leadership will add the farm bill to the annual defense authorization bill — also a must-pass package this December — but GOP aides and lawmakers seem to be leaning toward coupling it with the CR.”

A chance? Sure, but don’t bet a nickel on this Congress agreeing to an entirely new farm bill in two weeks after two years of boasting, bickering and backbiting.

What will get pushed hard in the CR is another farmer “economic assistance” package to “offset lower commodity prices and high production costs,” FERN reported in early December. The House effort, estimated to cost $21 billion, has picked up a key Senate backer, the ranking Ag Committee Republican, John Boozman.

If successful, eligible farmers will likely receive a maximum payment of $350,000 per person, or “nearly three times the usual $125,000 limit.”

That would make Christmas merry and bright for at least one group on Capitol Hill.