If the House does follow through on what appears to be the speaker’s timetable, that chamber’s version of the new farm bill will likely pass by mid-December. One of the first things he indicated to his peers was that getting the farm bill done in the House in December is a priority. “Fortunately, Speaker Johnson has gone a long way toward expelling that uncertainty. And the longer it was, the more anxious folks got,” he said. “What the three-week delay did was create a bit of uncertainty. Though the existing farm bill did expire at the end of September at a time when the House GOP was filtering through speaker designees, Kieffer said, “there was little expectation the new farm bill would be in place by then.” In all fairness, the impasse over the speakership in the House Republican Conference did not delay the farm bill. “And we are ready to work with them to help them accomplish good things with the funding bills, to keep the government going and, obviously, to get to a farm bill.” “Now, having said that, it appears the House is back on track, and that a majority in the House is motivated to get things moving,” Kieffer added. “But ultimately, they got it figured out and, you know, it’s often said that democracy is messy, and those three weeks showed just that,” he said. I mean, these are the elected officials that we sent to Washington to work. “I think it’s fair to say that there were many folks who were scratching their heads and some who were even a little frustrated by what they saw going on. “Well, it certainly provided some uneasiness across the country,” Kieffer said. The first question we asked was how the agricultural community viewed the three weeks of paralysis and infighting that began with the historic ouster of one House speaker and, finally, the installation of another, while it was anxiously awaiting the passage of legislation that will guide farming and ranching and conservation efforts for the next five years. To get a sense of where things stand, The Well News caught up Thursday with Sam Kieffer, vice president of public policy for the American Farm Bureau Federation. What the speaker didn’t wade into were any specifics in regard to pending legislation that needs to pass quickly like the new farm bill, the multiyear law that governs an array of agricultural and food programs, but which lapsed at the end of the 2023 fiscal year.
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