New Farm Bill on the Way?

The farm media are panting about the urgent necessity of a new Farm Bill, as the present one is expired and living on a brief extension. They are both overstating the need for one, and the likelihood that Congress will pass one in this politically hyper-charged presidential election year.

The current bill the House and Senate ag committees are allegedly "compromising on," containing some $9 billion in new spending, will undoubtedly be vetoed by President Bush. The president has suddenly found his backbone and the resolve to get a handle on spending after 7 years in office, and is doing what he should have been doing all along--vetoing budget-busting legislation.

Another extension of the current Farm Bill, until after the election in November, is a much more likely prospect than enactment of the expansive, expensive bill the Democratic Congress is half-heartedly fashioning. The votes to override a Bush veto don't exist. The wildcard is how important the farm vote is in the presidential campaign--maybe difference-making in only a handful of states--and how the pols calculate the relative importance of that.

Federal farm subsidy levels on crops are set in the Farm Bill, and the commodity futures markets watch that, as they seek to manipulate cash crop prices. The lack of a Farm Bill may already be written into the equation, and the effect could be minimal or not at all.

Once the Iowa primary is over, the presidential candidates ignore farm policy, as anyone who reads or watchs the mass media can readily see. They have bigger fish to fry.