When you are getting your news out of Mankato, Minn, then you have to admit that maybe it’s not the top priority of Congresspersons in Washington. Clearly, that is the case with the Farm Bill. As Congress winds down to go home for the campaign season, it appears as if there will be no Farm Bill. Efforts to pass a one-year extension of the current bill went into the crapper when the Republican leadership in the House realized that they did not have the votes to pass it. There are still too many Republicans from farm states to not pay attention to what needs to happen for farm states. So, we are now back to looking at the bill that came out of the House Agriculture Committee. You know, the one that cuts Food Stamps to the bone and can’t get any Democratic votes.
That one has had problems getting Republican votes because non-farm state Republicans don’t want to vote for a several billion dollar spending bill. There is an answer, however, and it is to put the Farm Bill into a car with Defense Appropriations and drive them both off a cliff. Or get them near the cliff. The cliff being “sequestration” which is what will happen automatically under that big debt ceiling deal that got passed last year. Sequestration would cut everything, including defense, dramatically. Nobody wants this to happen, and if the House leadership can call cutting food stamps the only way to save defense spending and avert a cliff dive, that’s what they will do. Not that it will save any money anywhere along the way.