Natasha flagged a Post piece from yesterday looking at Dem disagreements in the week of the full House committee markup of the farm bill:
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) have told Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin C. Peterson (D-Minn.) that they will not support a "status quo" bill.
AgSec Johanns agrees. And
Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-Calif.), a senior member of the Agriculture Committee, complained that the bill would provide $465 million in new money over five years to support fruit and vegetable growers.
"That's not even a crumb," he told reporters, adding that unless improvements are made the bill will face a battle on the House floor.
As far as guys like Peterson are concerned, fruit and vegetables are the work of pansy-ass commie pinko liberals, and no fit subject of subsidy from Uncle Sam.
Surely, the piece suggests, now is the hour when reform has become possible:
House Democrats, with their base in urban areas and coastal regions, [are] not beholden to programs weighted toward large commercial farmers in the grain and cotton belts.
Which sounds right. But then it also says
top Democrats are reluctant to push too hard for changes that could put at risk Democratic freshmen from "red" states, which backed President Bush's reelection in 2004 and where the farm vote is still a factor in close elections.
Er... Aren't Pelosi and Hoyer top Democrats (the top-est, in fact). And yet they're telling Peterson no status quo bill.
So - are P & H working both sides of the street? Are they stamping their feet for the benefit of the urbanites but telling Peterson sotta voce that he needn't go too far away from the status quo to satisfy them - a block or two will do?
How are the urbanist forces in the house organized? Is there a caucus, and whipping and such?
Or do the corn and pork boys have them tied up in logrolls?
We know that Ron Kind is trying to rally folks round his FARM21 bill for a floor fight (the FARM21 text got gleefully kiboshed in an Ag subcommittee) - but Dan Owens (a friendly ag visitor at the old place) was far from impressed with the Kind alternative.
And Harkin (aka Mr Cheesy Poof), last time I looked (same piece), was supposedly working up a bill that was somewhere between Peterson and Kind.
There's surely room for Pelosi to be genuinely radical in skewing the objective of farm policy from helping farmers towards helping consumers. But I'm not holding my breath.
[There was a Post op-ed last Monday asking Can Pelosi Say Nyet To Her Party's Old Bulls? - and citing Peterson and Dingell.
On farm handouts it has this:
Peterson's committee is about to mark up a bill that would preserve the existing system of subsidies. Half of these subsidies go to around 20 congressional districts -- including, you'll be surprised to hear, Peterson's.
(It's not clear from the context whether the source of the breakdown by CD was USDA or the Environmental Working Group.)]
STATE BLOGS
