An Urban's Rural View

It's 2014, Time for More Farm Bill Fun

Urban C Lehner
By  Urban C Lehner , Editor Emeritus
Connect with Urban:
@urbanize

It's hold-your-breath time for the farm bill. After two years of legislative false starts, the conferring Congressional ag leaders think they'll soon be able to submit a report. But will the full House and Senate vote to accept it?

It was never going to be easy to bridge the $35 billion gap between the two chambers' food-stamp cuts. And now there's the threatened entanglement of the farm bill with the debate over extending long-term unemployment benefits.

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If, as reported, the conference compromise calls for whacking $9 billion out of food stamps over 10 years, Democratic votes will be needed to get the report through the House. Capitalizing on this leverage, some House Democrats are threatening to vote no unless the lower house agrees to revive the just-expired jobless-benefits program. That won't happen, Speaker John Boehner says, unless the Democrats come up with a compensatory $25 billion a year in other cuts.

And so, just as the path to a farm bill seemed to be clearing, a new roadblock appears. How big is it? Are there workable ways to get around it? It's unclear.

The eminent political philosopher Dave Barry describes Washington as "a city that -- despite having no industries and a workforce consisting almost entirely of former student-council presidents -- manages to produce 93% of the nation's crises."

The one thing that's clear as 2013 bows out and 2014 appears on stage is that Washington's farm-bill crisis isn't over yet.

Happy New Year.

(ES)

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william1452
7/20/2016 | 2:31 AM CDT
Fun is most compulsory element in our life but i never recommend social networks for taking some fun. Social Networking, a trend of Internet development in the direction of integration, combining features into a single, multi-user web-based platforms. These platforms enable users to chat with friends, read news, listen to music, share it with others, to participate in the discussions, combined with the same interests, create communities and all of these features are concentrated on one site! but if we talk about dark side of social networks than we become tired during reading. If we talk about shortly about its dark site than its like a wasting time, wrong information, bad community of friends, un-auntentic news etc. All the things you can easily found in social networks. We should must use it but for limited to entertain us. Why urban life is much busy as compared to rural just due to these kind of activities. Instead of wasting time on social networks, we can watch a productive movie with your friends at home on different sources like movierulz.us / join4movies.info or at letsmewatchthis.net. Entertainment should must be productive. Anyways, everyone has its own thinking. Thanks for sharing the nice piece of information with us.
william1452
7/20/2016 | 2:31 AM CDT
Fun is most compulsory element in our life but i never recommend social networks for taking some fun. Social Networking, a trend of Internet development in the direction of integration, combining features into a single, multi-user web-based platforms. These platforms enable users to chat with friends, read news, listen to music, share it with others, to participate in the discussions, combined with the same interests, create communities and all of these features are concentrated on one site! but if we talk about dark side of social networks than we become tired during reading. If we talk about shortly about its dark site than its like a wasting time, wrong information, bad community of friends, un-auntentic news etc. All the things you can easily found in social networks. We should must use it but for limited to entertain us. Why urban life is much busy as compared to rural just due to these kind of activities. Instead of wasting time on social networks, we can watch a productive movie with your friends at home on different sources like movierulz.us / join4movies.info or at letsmewatchthis.net. Entertainment should must be productive. Anyways, everyone has its own thinking. Thanks for sharing the nice piece of information with us.
Bonnie Dukowitz
12/31/2013 | 5:45 AM CST
If the politicians think the Food Bill should be loaded down with other re-election gimmicks, will the food producers qualify for unemployment when their ag. operation does not meet the criteria to obtain an input operating loan? Anyone elected should be removed from office if these," Me Too" amendments are attempted which are not germane to the bill. An unemployment ext. is a totally different subject.