Inside D.C.

Roberts, Stabenow and a bipartisan Farm Bill

To a Senator, this week’s Agriculture Committee Farm Bill markup was a textbook study in happy politicking.  Committee Chair Pat Roberts (R, KS) and ranking member Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D, MI) reveled in plaudits for their leadership, the hard work of their outstanding staffs, and the sheer bipartisan beauty of S. 3042, The Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018.

The bill sailed through markup in a little less than 2 ½ hours, not bad for a 1,006-page piece of legislation and one against which 196 amendments were filed.  The lion’s share of the credit for such efficiency goes to Roberts, the only sitting member of Congress to have served as chair of both the House and Senate agriculture committees, and a lawmaker who holds the dubious distinction of surviving the most Farm Bills of any living lawmaker.

The man is also known for his plain speaking and razor sharp wit. He gets bonus credit for restraint, letting pass during markup multiple openings to poke and jab his grandiloquent colleagues.

Roberts read the tea leaves early on as he watched the silliness and political angst unfold on the other side of Capitol Hill.  In the House Agriculture Committee, Chair Mike Conaway (R, TX) was robbed of any chance of comity and/or bipartisanship when House leadership decided the House Farm Bill would fire the opening salvo in the GOP’s war of welfare reform.  By tucking stricter work/training requirements for food stamp recipients into bill, Conaway was foreclosed from following the conventional subcommittee-to- full committee legislative evolution Farm Bills follow as it was obviously too risky to gamble on subcommittee approval of the food stamp language.

The Kansas lawmaker also learned as ranking majority member of the committee he now chairs not to underestimate Stabenow.  She was chair when the committee forged the 2014 Farm Bill, and no doubt Roberts alerted her to mine fields aplenty when it served him do so.  This go-around, as he sits in the chair, he reaps the benefits of his invested support four years ago and their cooperation since.  The two pledged to write a bipartisan bill, and a bipartisan bill is what the committee approved this week.  So in sync were the two, they parried unpopular, unwise and unwanted amendments like Fred and Ginger doing a fox trot.

To his credit and very good fortune, Roberts also enjoys a Senate majority leader with whom he can talk plainly.  Before the first word was on paper, Roberts buttonholed Sen. Mitch McConnell (R, KY) to get a commitment on floor time once the committee completed its labors.  It didn’t hurt McConnell was working overtime to get language into the Farm Bill legalizing industrial hemp production in the U.S. for the first time in 40 years — along with crop insurance and USDA research funding — a legitimate goal and an economic shot in the arm for Kentucky and a number of other states, and a goal Roberts could help McConnell achieve.

Granted the Senate Farm Bill is likely never going to described as revolutionary or bringing substantial change to current farm program operation as was the 1996 “Freedom to Farm Act”, aka the FAIR Act, authored and championed by Roberts as chair of the House Agriculture Committee.  However, this go-around is hamstrung by the fifth year of a farmville recession and by an administration which seems hell bent on offending just about every world trading partner enjoyed by U.S. agriculture.

So, if as wiser men than I have said, “politics is the art of the possible,” then the Senate Farm Bill, at least as it now stands, is what’s possible, and on balance, it’s not too bad.  Perhaps it only tweaks current law and nibbles around the edges of innovation, but it holds the line on cost, preserves income supports and crop insurance and fixes what needed fixing in 2014 programs.

Floor action, which could come as early as next week, promises another Fred and Ginger amendment performance by Pat and Debbie, but the lift shouldn’t be too great as Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D, NY) has joined the Greek chorus of bipartisan praise for the bill.

The battle royal will be in conference with the House, likely sometime in July.  My money’s on Fred and Ginger.