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Grassley is unhappy with opening of farm bill

Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley is not happy with what he says is an opening of the 2014 farm bill.

The Senate Ag Committee member is upset with an amendment to the recently-passed omnibus budget bill that removes marketing-loan gains from the 125-thousand dollar per person payment cap for commodity programs.

Grassley says lawmakers from Southern states were behind the move to bring back so-called “generic certificates”.

“I think it’s just a big giveaway to one commodity group that’s probably trying to make up for the fact that cotton lost cases to Brazil in the past under the WTO with some of the subsidies we had for cotton,” Grassley says.

Grassley, a long-time proponent of tighter limitations on federal farm payments, says the change will hurt young farmers.

“The largest farmers who will benefit the most from these unlimited subsidies will continue their stranglehold on acres that prevent young and beginning farmers from ever having a chance to get started in farming.”

Grassley says it was wrong to open the farm bill.

“The principle that a farm bill shouldn’t be opened up in the middle of the five years that it’s supposed to be operational—and the way we argued successfully so we didn’t take three billion dollars out of crop insurance—has been violated now.”

AUDIO: Excerpts from Senator Grassley’s conference call with ag reporters