A Post-Election Farm Bill Will Require High-Level Dealmaking, Say Analysts

The lame-duck session of Congress offers a last chance to enact the new farm bill this year, but it would require compromise on a number of nettlesome policy disputes and an agreement among House and Senate leaders on how much to spend, said farm policy experts. The bill could also be sidetracked by overarching issues such as passing a government funding bill, they cautioned.

Neither chamber has made much progress on the farm bill, now 14 months overdue. The House Agriculture Committee approved a Republican-written bill in May that is $33 billion over budget. Leaders of the Senate Agriculture Committee have written farm bill outlines but have not drafted legislative language.

“There are so many permutations that it’s hard to say anything with confidence,” said Pat Westhoff, head of the FAPRI think tank at the University of Missouri. He said the first question should be: Is there sufficient desire among the principal players to get a farm bill done that people are prepared to compromise? After that come the questions of how to resolve the budget challenge and how much time is needed for debate and passage, he said.

Lawmakers are scheduled to convene for the lame-duck session after Veterans Day and adjourn before Christmas.

“A leadership-level agreement is necessary,” said Jonathan Coppess of the University of Illinois, author of a 2018 book on farm policy. He said there are three hurdles for the lame-duck session: potential challenges to election results, hurricane relief legislation, and funding the government for the rest of the fiscal year.

“If the lame duck can clear those three hurdles, and quickly, I see that the precursor to any farm bill getting passed is a public agreement by leadership of the House and Senate — not just at the committee level — on the funding issues,” said Coppess. “Without that top-line agreement on the budget blockers, there is no way for the committees to work out the farm bill details.”

Progress on the farm bill has been stalemated for months by disagreements over crop subsidy spending, SNAP funding, and climate mitigation. House and Senate Republicans want a 15% increase in so-called reference prices, which would make it easier to trigger subsidy payments; a $29 billion cut in SNAP; and allowing climate funds to be spent for conservation practices that do not sequester carbon or reduce greenhouse gases. Democrats have ruled out SNAP cuts and want to keep the climate “guardrails” in place. Senate Agriculture Committee chairwoman Debbie Stabenow has suggested an increase of at least 5% in reference prices.

The simplest resolution would be for Republicans to drop their demand for SNAP cuts, for Democrats to agree to higher reference prices, and for both sides to “reach an accommodation on climate guardrails where everyone can claim victory,” said a veteran farm lobbyist. However, a farm bill compromise was not certain, he said, since election results might make one side reluctant to make a deal if it expected more leverage in the new session of Congress. And if there was a deal, disappointed lawmakers might oppose it unless it included their pet provisions.