The Iowa Delegation Owns a Big Part of Continuing Farm Bill Failure. Author Barry Piatt promises this news story will be followed with an “Accountability Ticker.”
469 Days: The number of days that have elapsed without Congress passing a new five-year Farm Bill since it expired on September 30, 2023. (Total days as of Sunday, 01/12/2025)
The boldface paragraph you see above is a new “Accountability Ticker.” This column is instituted to monitor just how late it is to write a new five-year Farm Bill, as Congress has continued to fail to do so since the old one—last written in 2018—expired.
The legislation is vital for America’s family farmers and other agricultural sectors, but remains un enacted over a year and a half after the bill, which was already five years old and out of date then, expired.
Meanwhile, Congress – including Iowa’s congressional delegation – pursues the job of writing a new five year farm bill with the urgency of paint drying and the effectiveness of the mythological Greek, Sisyphus, who spent eternity rolling a huge rock up a hill only watch it roll back down once he got to the top, never completing the task.
Sisyphus may have put more effort into what he was trying to accomplish.
The Farm Bill was last written in 2018. It expired on September 30, 2023. A new one should have been written before the old one expired. It wasn’t. There have been numerous promises to get the bill enacted:
- before it expired in 2023;
- later in 2023, after it expired;
- then early in 2024; For sure!;
- well, then mid-2024;
- ok, late in the session in 2024; We’re certain of this;
- perhaps maybe after the election;
- before the 118th Congress ended in December 2024
- Well, for sure — right after the new 119th Congress begins in January 2025 – which is where we are now.
A quick check of the House and Senate Ag Committees website reveals no press releases announcing any new progress on a new Farm Bill as the new 119th Congress begins. And no committee meetings or hearings are scheduled on the Farm Bill or anything else next week.
They are in a really big rush to get this done, aren’t they?
I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t go back to a cafe with service this slow and lousy, or that makes so many broken promises to deliver so much as a hamburger to me. Yet, here we are with the Farm Bill, and no metaphorical “hamburger” in sight even yet!
Four of Iowa’s six member congressional delegation serve on the congressional Agriculture Committees: Both U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Joni Ernst (R-IA) are on the Senate Ag Committee. and Reps. Zach Nunn (R-3rd IA) and Randy Feenstra (R-4th IA) are on the House Ag Committee.
They are not idle bystanders in this failure of Congress to do its job for farmers by getting a new five year Farm Bill written. They own a big part of that failure.
Each bragged about how important their membership on the Agriculture Committee was for Iowa’s economy and Iowa’s familly farmers when they were named to the panels.
Yet, here we are: Iowa is one of the leading agriculture states in the nation; two thirds of its entire congressional delegation serves on the congressional ag committees; and still a new Farm Bill languishes, the old one long out of date, expired, and a new one gathering dust.
Granted, bragging and sending press releases are both a lot easier to do than passing legislation, but that’s not why any of them were sent to Congress. They were sent there to get things done.
Iowans had a right to expect a lot less talk from Iowa’s Republicans on the Ag Committees about what they “were gonna do” about the Farm Bill and a lot more action to get a new five year Farm Bill written and passed.
That’s not what Iowans got.
What Iowans got was a lot of MAGA-related political tomfoolery aand worse as the Farm Bill languished, unattended.
Senator Grassley has the poorest excuse. Rather than focusing on a new Farm Bill, he pushed MAGA lies about the so-called “Biden crime family,” and the supposed bribes the President and his son, Hunter, supposedly accepted from Burisma, a company in Ukraine. All of it lies. None of it supported by a single scrap or syllable of evidence by Chuck Grassley or anyone else.
There were, however, plenty of politically convenient innuendo and smears from Senator Grassley, the kind that made the MAGA gangs happy and would have made the demagogue, the late former Senator Joe McCarthy (R-WI) proud.
Grassley pushed those lies hard, even when warned by the FBI that the informant, Alexander Smirnov, and his “information” were not reliable.
How do we know it was all lies? The “informant” pushing the smears was charged, pled guilty, and was sentenced this week to six years in prison for lying to the FBI about all of it.
Grassley was a central player in spreading and vouching for Smirnov’s lies – without any credible evidence.
Yet there has not been so much as a mumbled “excuse me” from Senator Grassley, much less an apology from him to the Bidens – or the American people – for his tawdry lies.
Grassley’s pathetic performance in the service of the corrupt political MAGA gang shredded his once, long ago, and proud reputation as a fearless and sharp congressional investigator leaving it in tatters, incinerated in the service of MAGA.
It must have been hard and exhausting work performing that recklessly and incompetently. No wonder Senator Grassley didn’t have time or energy to use his position on the Senate Agriculture Committee to get the Farm Bill across the finish line.
Ernst, for her part, was busy chasing a move up the Senate Republican leadership ladder over the past year, which of course, meant similar partisan fealty to the MAGA gangs and agenda.
Not much time left in the midst of all that for the Farm Bill, either.
Over in the House, most of Nunn’s and Feenstra’s Farm Bill “work” seems to have been spent sending out press releases rather than actually doing the heavy lifting required in Congress to get the bill passed.
It is important not to minimize all this failure.
The Farm Bill is a really big deal for Iowa. It sets the basic policies and ground rules for the nation’s farm and nutrition programs.
Farming is not an industry, or way of life, that easily turns on a dime. Farmers need to plan, often years in advance. That’s what the Farm Bill is supposed to enable, as well as putting a basic safety net for farm operations and rural communities in place to protect from the ravages of market disruption, weather disasters and sudden or cyclical price collapse.
The world has changed since 2018, the last time the current bill – which Congress keeps kicking down the road with extensions of one year or less – was written.
Agriculture itself has changed since 2018.
- So why is Congress continuing to saddle farmers with an outdated farm program?
- Why are Iowans on the Ag Committees in Congress apparently so willing to let this happen without a sense of urgency to update and write a new five year Farm Bill?
A new Farm Bill needs action. It has needed action for the last two years, and it certainly needs it now. How much longer will Iowans and farmers across the country have to wait?
Senators Grassley? Senator Ernst? Representative Nunn? Representative Feenstra?How much longer does the Iowa delegation’s Farm Bill losing streak continue?
I don’t have those answers, but I can provide a weekly update on how long its been since the old five year Farm Bill expired and how many days a new one is overdue.
That’s what our new weekly Farm Bill “Accountability Ticker” will deliver. Stay tuned.