What They Do While They Don't Pass a New Farm Bill

Some Iowa delegation members choose odd priorities over passing a new Farm Bill.

WEEKLY OVERDUE FARM BILL TICKER: 476 Days: The number of days that have elapsed since the 2018 Farm Bill expired on September 30, 2023, without Congress passing a new one. (Total days as of Sunday, 01/19/2025)

Next week our “Weekly Overdue Farm Bill Ticker” will move to its new home at the bottom of this column, but before it takes up residence there, it’s worth taking a look at what some members of Iowa’s congressional delegation are doing INSTEAD of getting the Farm Bill passed.

What they choose to do while the Farm Bill remains in limbo - if not suspended animation - is a good indicator of where their priorities lie.

It is pretty obvious - with President-elect Trump and unelected, unvetted, unconfirmed by the Senate, and conflicts of interest laden Elon Musk talking about cutting the federal budget by nearly $2 trillion - failing to enact a new Farm Bill before the MAGA gangs take over was a pretty poor choice.

It’s clear the consequences of the decision by Republicans in Congress to let the expired Farm Bill “twist slowly in the wind” is going to cost farmers dearly.

Here’s why: Any Farm Bill passed by the new 119th Congress and that Trump will sign is going to be a shadow of what it would have been had it passed in the 118th Congress. That Congress had a Democratic Senate, and President Joe Biden waiting at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue to sign a good bill. Both had a history of supporting strong Farm Bills. They did not see Farm Bills, as the incoming gang does, as simply a place ripe for harvesting more tax cuts for billionaires.

Make no mistake: Iowa’s delegation played a special role in the failure to get a new Farm Bill enacted on time, and certainly in time to be able to get one that would actually help family farmers. Two thirds of Iowa’s six person congressional delegation serves on the House and Senate Agriculture Committees - Zach Nunn (R-3rd) and Randy Feenstra (R-4th) in the House, and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Joni Ernst (R-IA) in the Senate.

They tell us frequently in their press releases how important, in fact, vital their work is to the Agriculture Committees.

Few farm states have more at stake, economically, in a federal Farm Bill.

Fewer still have two thirds of their congressional delegation sitting on the House and Senate committees that write federal farm policy laws.

Fat lot of good it did for Iowa, however, when the 2018 Farm Bill expired and more than one and a half. years passed without a new one being enacted.

To judge by the results so far - a long ago expired Farm Bill and enactment of a new one still no where in sight more than a year and a half later - both the House and Senate Agriculture Committees might as well have been 100% packed with members from New York City.

New York City!

It’s worth asking the question: If Iowans on the Ag Committees haven’t been up to getting a new Farm Bill enacted for more than a year and a half after the old one expired, what have they been doing?

Here are a couple of examples from this past week:

• Rep. Zach Nunn showed up on Fox News to tell California how to run its own state business. On behalf of the MAGA gangs in Congress, he threatened California. If California doesn’t submit to MAGA’s political will, MAGA will hold urgently needed emergency wild fire disaster aid hostage.

I’m not quite sure how California’s own state laws and policies became the business of a member of Congress from Iowa - but I’m pretty sure that threatening to with hold help from victims of catastrophe who desperately need help is not a reflection of Iowa’s values.

Nunn also seems to have forgotten at least two things:

• Iowa has its own share of serious natural disasters that regularly wreck the state’s ag economy. I’m sure California would like for Iowa to change a few of its own laws and policies. If states get into the business of leveraging emergency aid against victims to advance their own political agenda, that’s a fight Iowa is not likely to win. Iowa has 4 US House members. California’s has 52. Good luck in that fight, Mr. Nunn.

• Any disaster aid California gets is money California taxpayers paid into the federal treasury along with other states, money that is used each year to pay for emergency disaster help whenever and where ever it is needed.

  Like in Iowa. Often.

  Nunn is effectively saying that we should hold hostage from California the money California has paid into the Treasury to help states hit by disasters. To achieve a MAGA political agenda.

I’m also pretty sure that very few - if any - Iowa churches teach a doctrine that when disaster strikes, we should use any assistance we can provide as a club to beat the victims over the head until they change their ways to fit our own political views.

To the oft-asked question; What would Jesus do?

The answer is: Not that.

Zach Nunn could have been getting the Farm Bill passed, but instead this is what he chose to do: Go on Fox “News” and advance a dumb MAGA idea, wrapped in a threat.

Wrong choice, Mr. Nunn. Wrong priority, Congressman.

Meanwhile, over in the Senate, Joni Ernst was busy ignoring the Farm Bill and pursuing her own MAGA agenda.

Granted, it might be a bit too generous to say she was “Pursuing her own MAGA agenda.” She was trying desperately to avoid a MAGA primary, is what she was doing, blatantly, right out in the open for all to see, and embarrassingly.

Actually, she was fleeing from the MAGA gangs in her own Republican Party and, in the process, throwing women - victims of military sexual assault, to be specific - under the bus.

I know. I know.

How can I say that? She is, herself, a survivor of sexual assault. She has a reputation for standing up for sexual assault victims, defending them, and working to prevent sexual assault in the military.

She would never do that!

Except that she did.

The real question is not how could I say such a thing, but rather, how could she turn so quickly on a dime and do such a thing?

Like Chuck Grassley’s once-proud reputation as an effective Senate investigator, Ernst’s reputation appears to have also undergone a transformation of the “that was then, this is now” kind.

Rattled, apparently to her bones, by MAGA rumblings of a “primary” after she said out loud that she wanted to think about Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense - Pete Hegseth - she promptly switched her tune once MAGA cleared its throat to signal its displeasure.

Even to the point of declining to meet with the woman who alleges Hegseth sexually assaulted her.

Now, one would think that Senator Ernst would stay on that fight.

One would think that when a man who is an adjudicated sexual assaulter (Trump); nominates a man credibly accused of committing sexual assault (Hegseth); to head the Defense Department, which has long standing problems with sexual assaults against women who serve - that someone with Ernst’s history, record and reputation would want to get to the bottom of things before casting her vote on that nomination.

Certainly that she would, at least, want to hear the accuser, face to face, and hear her story - even if only in the privacy of her own Senate office.

But no. That’s not what happened.

Ernst heard the word “primary” - a threat from the MAGA gangs. And promptly flip-flopped. She cut and ran to become one of the loudest voices in the MAGA “Hegseth Hosanna Chorus”

In fairness to members of Iowa’s congressional delegation who serve on the Ag Committees, they are not just lounging around smoking cigars instead of getting the Farm Bill passed. They are working. Just not on much that would make you proud or that is likely to help Iowa farmers get a new Farm Bill.

Instead they are choosing to do other things, like:

• tell California what its own state laws and policies should be and threaten to with hold desperately needed emergency aid from victims of the wild fires in that state to force them to do as MAGA tells them to do.

• run from the MAGA gangs that threaten primaries and throw under the bus military women who need a voice in the Senate and on the Armed Services Committee.

One more thing: On Friday, January 17, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson (15th - PA) announced that 13 of his fellow Republicans on the committee were being named to leadership positions on the committee - primarily chairs and vice chairs of the Ag Committee’s six subcommittees.

There are 29 Republicans who serve on the House Agriculture Committee. Do the math. That means nearly every other Republican member of the House Agriculture Committee (44.8%) is now either a subcommittee chair or vice-chair. Pretty good odds of getting one of those posts, right

So what did the Iowa Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee - Nunn and Feenstra - get when subcommittee chair and vice chair posts were being handed out like Oprah gives away cars?

They got nothing.

If you count the 13 Republican leadership posts awarded, and the fact that we still don’t have a new Farm Bill, that makes the Iowa members of the House Agriculture Committee 0 for14.

And the new Congress is yet young.

Again, in fairness to them, if you only count unthinking, blind - and sometimes trembling - toadyism to the MAGA gangs, their percentage is much higher. But that’s another story.

Finally, remember: Our “Weekly Overdue Farm Bill Ticker” is now a weekly feature of this column. Come back for weekly updates on one of the most important bills for Iowa Congress will consider. We will, of course, be writing about many other topics over the coming weeks and months, but the updated Farm Bill ticker will be right here, each week.

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