The planned congressional farm bill conference will likely result in sparks, congressional insiders report, with House Republicans and Senate Democrats expected to vent months of tension and frustration over a series of failed farm bills.
For more than a year, the farm bill has been stalled in Congress due to partisan bickering and congressional infighting. House Republicans refused to even bring the bill to the floor last year (with some pundits believing that they were unwilling to commit to a major spending bill in the middle of a presidential election). While the House did pass a farm bill this year, it split food stamps and farm subsidies, all but guaranteeing that their bill will not pass the Senate or be signed into law by President Obama.
When House and Senate conferees meet next week, they will have to hammer out the various differences between the House and Senate legislation. At the top of that list is a major disconnect between nutritional subsidies. The Senate bill cuts about $4 billion over the next ten years while the House bill cuts nearly $40 billion. The farm bill conferees will also need to agree on crop insurance funding (the Senate bill would gradually decrease crop insurance subsidies to farmers making more than $750,000 a year), dairy subsidies, and commodity supports.
Despite the modest breakthrough that even getting a conference committee together represents, the conferees have a long row to hoe in order to get a unified farm bill to the White House.
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Written by: Justin Ellison / Farm Plus Staff Writer