After all the farm bill noise, some quiet negotiation

Somewhere on the third floors of the Russell Senate Office Building and the Longworth House Office Building, away from the entrances of the respective body’s agriculture committees, it’s been said there are conference rooms with tables lined with files marked “Do Not Remove From This Room” and “Eyes Only—No Copying.”

These are not the farm bills passed by the House and Senate earlier this year. These are pages of the proposed compromise 2018 farm bill.

These are the secret pages drawn up by staffers perhaps half the age or younger than their bosses, many of them are nameless, but whose faces are the ones you see on C-SPAN passing paper on to their members of the House or Senate. The only way most farmers and ranchers will ever know these people will be if they go to Capitol Hill as part of a delegation from a lobby group.

These are the people who’ll greet you with a smile and say, “The (senator or congressman) is unavailable, but I’ll be happy to speak with you.” It’s these eager young people who will shape farm and nutrition policy for the next five years.

What will they give their bosses—and us—to review once their own negotiations are completed? Who knows?

It’s easier to have hard copies of these documents filtering about the room, rather than have staffers share material electronically, out of fear of leaks. It’s a tradition that everyone honors. It’s a sort of code of the Aggies.

Still, there are tales from farm bill negotiations from years ago where tensions filled to the brim. The best one I’ve heard is the one that took place in one of those back offices late one Saturday night in which one young staffer, peeved at a slight insult at the end of a long day of negotiations, leapt over a table filled with paper and pizza boxes and punched out his counterpart from the other side of the Hill and other party.

Once they have something they can give to their bosses, these young staffers will once again slip behind and let the “grown-ups” finish the heavy lift to get the farm bill finished by the Sept. 30 deadline.

Looking at the differences between the two bills, it will be a big lift to get to a compromise. The big question is going to be who’s going to pay for whatever changes to come in the next bill.

If House members have their way, it looks like some conservation programs will be pared down to pay for the cost of job training programs tied to work requirements for the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program.

If Senate members win, it looks like there will be some shifting of funds around from here to there, but mostly there will be a slightly expanded Conservation Reserve Program while SNAP stays the same, but with tighter enforcement for system integrity.

We likely won’t know much about all this until a compromise is released, however, it would be wise if members and staff move into their conference with an eye to what President Donald Trump is doing on trade.

As I write this, Trump has just ordered the office of the U.S. Trade Representative to begin the process of imposing tariffs of 10 percent on an additional $200 billion of Chinese imports. This is on top of the 25 percent tariffs on approximately $34 billion worth of Chinese imports. These tariffs will eventually cover up to $50 billion in Chinese imports as legal processes conclude.

Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue has said numerous times the president would protect farmers from the market disruptions caused by the tariffs.

On a trip to Oregon a few days ago, Perdue told reporters the U.S. Department of Agriculture is working on “some sort of compensatory mitigation strategy” for farmers, but did not offer specifics. In further interviews, Perdue said he thought he could come up with a tariff mitigation using current USDA programs by the end of the summer.

“(Trump) knows that you all are great patriots. He knows that you stand behind him when he calls out China for cheating for years,” Perdue said. “But he also knows the bank is going to need more than patriotism to pay the bills.”

He’s got that right.

Many farm groups, no matter how overjoyed they are at the deregulatory framework Trump has espoused, are quietly fuming over the tariffs, as the historical record shows tariffs—for all the anger venting they produce—don’t work at solving trade problems.

It might be wise if members and staff work with Perdue in finding a long-term solution for tariff mitigation within the new farm bill. That idea should make any free trade conservative wince, but since Republicans for the most part have decided to cast their lot with Trump, they will need to figure out an expensive all-commodity solution to keep their farm base afloat while still imposing tariffs on China.

Looks like those back rooms will be busier than ever from now until Sept. 30.

Larry Dreiling can be reached at 785-628-1117 or [email protected].