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This weekend is the key to a new Farm Bill

Just as they did with immigration reform, comprehensive energy legislation and a host of lesser issues, the Democrats seem to be intent on consuming their own young, meaning for all the squawking about getting a Farm Bill done, it’s intraparty squabbling among Democrats that’s holding up the process.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Tom Harkin (D, IA) had a pretty candid press call with various reporters this week, and you can read the gist of it elsewhere on this site. But if you’ve been around Harkin for a couple of Farm Bills, then you realize what he’s saying to the media: “We done our job (as ag committee members), now it’s time for the money guys (Senate Finance and House Ways & Means) to put up or shut up” when it comes to how to pay for a Farm Bill.

This kicks the ball squarely into the court of Sen. Max Baucus (D, MT) and Rep. Charlie Rangel (D, NY), chairs of the Senate Finance and House Ways & Means Committees, respectively. And what we saw this week was a classic head-butting exercise by two congressional giants. No two members could be more different. Baucus is from a state so rural you could put the entire population in one borough of New York City. He wants programs that sell to farmers and ranchers back home, including a $4-6-billion (depending on to whom you speak) permanent disaster program, while Rangel is perusing a $270-billion Farm Bill and all he sees are various cuts to nutrition and feeding programs to pay for a whole lot of program spending his voters don’t understand and don’t care about.

There’s been no meeting of these two minds as of this writing, nor was Rep. Collin Peterson (D, MN), chair of the House Agriculture Committee, a happy guy when he went to Rangel earlier in the week and almost pleaded for a package of spending offsets that would move the bill to the President’s desk, and came away empty handed.

Then we have the leadership of the respective chambers taking pot shots at each other. This week, according to at least one major media report, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) told a group of ag lobbyists they needed to target House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) because Pelosi did not share his priority or sense of urgency about the Farm Bill because of record prices and high farm income. I’m sure she’s thrilled with that description.

But Reid may have hit on the real issue that’s percolating in the minds of many members from both sides of the aisle. Budget hawks, urban members, supporters of a bigger food stamp program, all are asking: How much pain will really be felt in the country if there is no “new” Farm Bill?

We may be on the verge of finding out.