http://www.politico.com/story/2012/12/farm-bill-fate-still-up-in-the-air-85612.html
Farm bill fate still up in the air
No crying over spilled milk for John Boehner.
For all the dire headlines, the House speaker seems settled into a waiting game on any farm bill extension, betting that a tax deal in the Senate will let him slip through a fix without having to give in to demands for a new dairy program backed by the House and Senate Agriculture Committees.
Monday morning arrived with still nothing on the House legislative schedule to block a half-century old 1949 farm law that kicks back in Tuesday and will require the Agriculture Department to begin buying up dairy products at a rate of $38.54 per hundredweight, more than double the current prevailing price.
The four top farm bill leaders in the House and Senate are united behind an extension that would run through September and provide more certainty going into New Year’s. Thus far Boehner and the GOP leadership have responded with a pair of 30-day patches that the Aggies dismiss as a “poor joke on farmers” — who, they ask, plants a crop for just 30 days?
The biggest single issue is the fate of a new dairy margin protection and market stabilization plan what promises to cost less than the current milk program but is strongly opposed by major processors aligned with the speaker.
At a lively GOP whip meeting Sunday, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas pressed hard for his longer extension and said later he was open to an up-or-down floor vote testing support for the new dairy policy. But no commitment has yet come from the leadership for such a vote, and in a series of sometimes colorful exchanges, Boehner went so far as to liken new dairy provisions in the Lucas bill to “communism.”
The sparring between the two men continued in a meeting of the full GOP conference Sunday night, where Boehner again laced into the dairy program. But Lucas — the traditional “good soldier” for his party — held his ground. And the back-and-forth illustrates the problems facing the GOP as it tries to untangle itself from the milk crisis brought on in large part because of Boehner’s refusal to allow floor debate in this Congress on a full-scale, five-year farm bill.
“We need to take positive action to put this issue to rest,” Lucas told reporters. “And make sure that it is clear to everybody in this country that the farm bill policy has certainty and we will not have eight- or nine-dollar milk.”
The chairman left no doubt that the two short-term bills were not his idea. In the whip’s meeting he was joined by Rep. Michael Conaway (R-Texas), a fellow member of the Ag committee who also made light of the proposals. And Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson, the ranking Democrat on the House Ag panel, weighed in with his own public statement later.
“The 30-day extension approach is a poor joke on farmers that offers no certainty, just more empty promises from the Republican leadership,” Peterson said, also warning that he would oppose any substitute bill “that would fail to reform the dairy safety net.”
Indeed, the Democrat is the lead architect of the dairy provisions so opposed by Boehner. And Peterson fears the speaker will attempt to strip out that language before the measure comes to the floor.
One alternative would be for Boehner to use his control of the House Rules Committee to allow an up-or-down vote on the floor. Asked by POLITICO if he thought that would be fair way to proceed, Peterson said, “I guess it is.” And he later signaled his receptiveness in a conversation with Lucas.
“That’s a topic I intend to bring up with management. It would seem a very logical way to proceed,” Lucas told reporters. “If that is the most contentious issue in the bill, it would seem appropriate to let the House work its will.”
But Boehner may be looking at how the Senate works its will first — on taxes.
With Vice President Joe Biden now taking an active role, Monday brought reports of fresh optimism of a potential agreement on which Bush-era tax cuts should be allowed to expire a year’s end.
If a deal is reached, a farm bill extension through the remainder of this fiscal year ending Sept. 30 could be included. A 33-page draft has been prepared to accomplish this without the dairy language that Boehner opposes.
For this reason, the speaker may find it better to wait. But in looking for votes for any deal, the White House and Senate leaders can’t ignore the fact that the full Senate approved the dairy provisions as part of its farm bill last June.
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