IT'S NO WONDER, really, that the
Farm Bill reform advocates are on the right track, trying to trim excessive payouts to large corporate farms while directing spending more toward farm conservation, such as funding farmers' efforts to limit the runoff pollution of waterways such as the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries.
As long as the five-year reauthorization remains in limbo, though, spending policies dictated by the existing Farm Bill legislation continue unabated for another year. The bottom line is that, thanks to partisan intransigence, subsidies will continue pouring out to agribusiness operations whose income levels are already inflated, largely due to the sale of corn for ethanol.
The Farm Bill stalemate is being blamed in large part on the failure of Senate Democrats, who hold a slight partisan edge since the 2006 elections, thanks to two Democrat-leaning independents, to produce a Farm Bill reformed to the degree promised. It's also a situation convenient for senators whose ears are held captive by agribusiness interests quite content with the status quo.
Too many lawmakers allow the politics of Capitol Hill to blunt progress on key initiatives, childishly pointing fingers across the aisle or attaching unrelated amendments that muddy the voting process. Republicans sought, for example, to add an illegal immigration amendment to the Farm Bill.
As a result, the Farm Bill embodies yet another in the series of complex and expensive issues, along with illegal immigration and No Child Left Behind, on which the Senate has failed to reach agreement. Self-inflicted wounds such as these have left the entire Congress with a 28 percent approval rating, a historic low.
This Farm Bill promised some $500 million to help farmers in the Chesapeake Bay watershed limit the farm-field runoff that contributes mightily to the bay's nutrient pollution. This is what a modern Farm Bill should be about.
Instead, there is a Farm Bill burdened by enough of the same old pork barrel spending to give opponents, no matter what their motivation, the upper hand. Let us hope that senators oppose it not because of the reforms it provides, but because the reforms fall short.
A Farm Bill must be passed before the 2008 harvest to prevent the legisla-
Rather than lawmakers banging their heads against a partisan wall, maybe they should put their heads together to come up with a Farm Bill that makes conservation spending an even higher priority and wasteful subsidies to agribusiness a thing of the past.
Would Chesapeake Bay advocates be willing to wait if revised legislation allocated even more for the cleanup effort? A bill that won't pass gets them nothing at all.