Dysfunction junction is not where ag advocates want the farm bill to be.
Unfortunately for the agriculture community, the House of Representatives is exactly where the farm bill must be passed, says Kam Quarles, CEO of the National Potato Council.
Quarles said the recent ouster of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., could slow progress in consideration of a new farm bill. The current farm bill expired Sept. 30.
McCarthy lost his leadership role after bringing a bipartisan deal to fund the government to a vote. The penalty for that vote was losing his job.
“It may be a real challenge to figure out who can get to the magic number of votes in the House to become the new speaker,” Quarles said. “Whoever that person is, is clearly going to have the immediate memory of watching McCarthy’s vote.”
With the current farm bill expired, Quarles said agriculture groups need to aggressively push lawmakers to prioritize passing a new farm bill, regardless of the chaotic political environment.
“It is going to be a real challenge for getting a new farm bill done,” he said. “I think everybody in agriculture has got to be pounding the table saying we have to have that farm bill done, regardless of this environment.”
The alternative to pushing through with a new farm bill may be short-term farm bill extensions that don’t respond to the changing needs of growers and the ag community.
“We could be sitting here a decade from now, fighting future battles with the tools from a decade earlier, that were constructed for, for the environment [in] 2018,” Quarles said. “That’s not going to be a good outcome for agriculture.”
With a government funding deadline looming in about 40 days, Quarles said the farm bill should be a top priority for lawmakers.
The dysfunction in House GOP leadership casts uncertainty on the farm bill process, and there needs to be a strong push from agriculture interests to pass a new bill, Quarles said.
Beyond the farm bill, Quarles said the chaos in Congress is not serving the country well.
“Hopefully this is kind of an inflection point where people realize we have to send serious people to Washington who, who really want to look at the complicated issues, and sit down and solve them,” he said.
