Congressional and presidential candidates are on the campaign trail promising treats to supporters and spinning spooky stories about their opponents. But a political poltergeist awaits their return. For on Capitol Hill a ghostly specter walks the halls. Try as they might, in the post-election Congressional session lawmakers will have to confront a DC creature that has become a thing of nightmares…the Farm Bill.

The Farm Bill is the primary legislative vehicle Washington uses to set federal policy around agriculture and much more. Adopted generally every five years, it sets rules for federally subsidized crop insurance and other crop-specific farm subsidy programs. Rural lawmakers, seeing their numbers and fearing they would lose the ability to dole out tax dollars to their constituents, grafted the food stamps program onto the farm bill in the 1970s. Now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the nation’s largest food aid program makes up more than 80 percent of the bill’s price tag. Over the years lawmakers have bolted on a dozen titles that stretch into every congressional district and bring more interests into the farm bill family. Conservation was added in 1985. The bill now contains programs on rural development, energy and biofuels, a forestry title, agricultural research, export promotion, urban agriculture, and even a whole section simply named “miscellaneous.”

For decades this legislative Frankenstein’s monster did its creators’ bidding. Rural lawmakers focused on farm subsidies and urban or suburban lawmakers generally more focused on the nutrition programs would circle the wagons in opposition to even the most common sense proposals. And while political tensions would rise, disagreements were typically regional, between crops, rather than partisan. Farm bills chugged along, getting bigger and bigger as more and more interests were placated.

Now the farm bill looks more like a legislative zombie. The bill was last passed by Congress in December 2018. Despite more than two years of debates, hearings, and discussions, lawmakers failed to even unveil a renewal proposal last year before it technically expired September 30, 2023. Jolted with a one-year extension to breathe new life into negotiations, the bill has yet again expired. And while lawmakers claim they can reach the finish line this year, they are more likely to simply extend it yet again.

Like many things in life, the biggest obstacle to a new farm bill is money. There just isn’t enough to satisfy the special interest thirst for cash.

The ghost of COVID-19 haunts the farm bill. The COVID induced spike in unemployment, which increased demand for SNAP, and temporary expansion of benefits under the various federal COVID spending bills, caused a spike in SNAP costs. And while these temporary expansions have ended, as COVID has waned, food inflation coupled with the Biden Administration’s update to how benefits are calculated (a recalculation the 2018 farm bill required) have raised SNAP costs to a projected $110 billion (annual average over the next 10 years).  Republicans, especially those in the House but not on the Agriculture Committee, have responded by clamoring for spending reductions.

House Agriculture Committee Republicans responded by re-jiggering some details in the SNAP program but most notably, requiring all future administrative SNAP rewrites to be budget neutral. This effectively cuts SNAP’s projected costs by $8 billion, not nearly enough to satisfy spending hawks, but more than enough to lose Democratic support for the bill. Ironically it does mean an administration can’t arbitrarily increase the program’s cost, but it also can’t decrease it.

As a sector, COVID affected agriculture much differently. Lockdowns and supply chain disruptions that sparked fears of massive economic loss, quickly dissipated. Economic expansion, massive COVID federal spending, and commodity price increases led to years of profitable income. In fact 2022 was the most profitable year ever for the agriculture sector since USDA has kept records. With incomes so high, government programs designed to cover low incomes, weren’t triggered, as designed.

But in Washington, the promises of spending are often more important than need. House Republican lawmakers responded this year with a farm bill to drastically increase the projected cost of farm subsidies. The centerpiece is an increase to government set minimum prices for a small set of commodity crops (corn, cotton, wheat, rice, etc). While farmers in all regions of the country would see increased subsidies from the House farm bill, this $45 billion cost increase disproportionately benefits cotton, rice, and peanut crops, which just so happen to be grown in the South. This obvious regional bias, coupled with the restrictions on SNAP and a House republican provision to redirect $20 billion in climate-focused Inflation Reduction Act funds to non-climate focused programs at USDA, have rendered the aggie, nutrition, conservation alliance moot.

For years Taxpayers for Common Sense has argued for a better farm bill. Instead of a bill filled with programs designed to dole out special interest treats, it needs to serve all Americans. That in itself would be a real treat. And it’s something the 119th Congress can deliver.