Page 12 - Farm Bill Series_The 7 Things You Should Know

examine program eligibility, and identify waste, fraud and abuse – while also looking for ways
“that the department could build on success.”

In addition, Lucas wanted the audits to be educational in nature, understanding that his new
members had never been through a farm bill before and represented states from Alabama to
Oregon. “While our priorities may differ, our facts cannot,” Lucas warned his fellow
members. “We need to prepare for the tough, and I mean tough, road ahead.” He also
pledged that “every program, every title will be on the table.”

Both Lucas and Stabenow hoped for the best – some sort of normal order that would allow them
to educate and consult with their committee members while writing a new farm bill that worked
for taxpayers as well as those in the countryside.
Budget pressures

But inside the Beltway, all of the political oxygen was being sucked into talks about the “out of
control” federal deficit, the debt ceiling and the federal budget. It seemed impossible to avoid
having the farm bill drawn into the debate. And it happened again and again and again over the
next few years.

The “opening salvo” arrived in January 2011, when then-Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner sent a
letter to Congress urging lawmakers to act soon to increase the debt ceiling. Treasury estimated
that U.S. borrowing needs could push the amount of debt past the legal borrowing limit of
$14.294 trillion sometime between March 31 and May 16.

There were various attempts to find a consensus for lifting the debt ceiling, while also cutting the
budget and federal spending. There was the Senate’s “Gang of Six,” a bipartisan group of three
Republicans and three Democrats, who started their own discussions on a long-term deficit deal.
Two members of the Senate Ag Committee, Kent Conrad, D-ND, and Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga.,
played key roles in those discussions.
Later on, Vice President Joe Biden got engaged in often contentious negotiations as did President
Obama and top congressional leaders like Speaker Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry
Reid. The verbal sparring continued for weeks.

It was these high-level discussions that really drove the four Ag Committee leaders to try and put
a package together during the Super Committee process, according to sources close to the
process.

“We kept hearing from numerous, solid sources inside leadership and the administration that the
Biden discussions had $30+ billion, including direct payments on the table. The four committee
leaders were damned if they do, damned if they don’t,” a source told Agri-Pulse.
“They could ‘write a bill in secret’ and eventually tick off every committee member and farm
group, or they could get gored by the Super Committee, lose all capabilities to write a farm bill
and possibly lose the farm program and crop insurance in the process.

“It seemed difficult to see how Stabenow, Lucas, Roberts and Peterson were supposed to win
under either scenario,” the source concluded.

10 www.Agri-Pulse.com