Farm Bill Drags On and On and On
Posted: April 21, 2008
“If farmers ran their business like we’re running this Farm Bill negotiation, we wouldn’t have any food to eat.”
That statement from Congressman Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) pretty well sums up the frustration felt by farmers and some lawmakers at this point with planting season here and no farm bill.
Congress got another one week extension of the current farm bill to try and get a new bill passed this week, but it is looking more and more like a long term extension of current legislation will be the end result.
Optimism was starting to sound a bit hollow on Friday when Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) called progress on the legislation “incremental at best” with funding of the bill continuing to be a stumbling block.
Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), the ranking member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, tried to sound optimistic. “Hopefully by the time Tuesday morning rolls around here, some kind of progress has been made.”
President Bush expressed great reluctance to extend the current bill another week, but gave Congress the benefit of the doubt and signed the extension Friday. USDA Deputy Secretary Chuck Conner says he did it to avoid reverting to the archaic 1949 farm law. “We owe it to the producers to not do anything that would be that disruptive,” said Conner.
However, unless significant progress is made within the next day or so, an extension of the current farm bill for another year at least seems the best course of action to give farmers some sense of security as they head to the fields.