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With U.S. farmers suffering through their worst drought in 50 years, you might think it would be a good time for Congress to pass a farm bill — especially one that revivified agricultural disaster assistance programs that lapsed last September.
But you would be wrong. For a variety of reasons, including internecine GOP warfare between peanut and soybean special interests, along with a Tea Party-fueled jihad against the safety net, the farm bill, normally renewed by Congress with clockwork regularity every five years, is going nowhere. Despite the Senate having passed its own version, and a bipartisan vote in the House Agricultural Committee approving the House’s version, Republican leaders appear to be in no hurry to move the bill to the floor before Congress goes on a month-long recess Aug. 3.
“Never before,” reports David Rogers in Politico, “in modern times has a farm bill reported from the House Agriculture Committee been so blocked. Politico looked back at 50 years of farm bills and found nothing like this.”
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