Senate Moving On Farm Bill

Senate Moving On Farm Bill. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

There are reports that the Senate is planning on doing some work on the Farm Bill this week. The move will be following a Tuesday afternoon cloture vote to take up the Paycheck Fairness Act - which is expected to be unsuccessful. But Kansas U.S. Senator Pat Roberts - Ranking Member of the Senate Ag Committee - says the decision as to when the farm bill will be brought to the floor lies in the hands of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

ROBERTS: We think probably Thursday but that’s going to stretch into the following week. You can’t get a bill done on Thursday - in one day. That’s ridiculous. And in a farm bill it usually takes two weeks. We think we can get it done in a week if we expedite things and we really convince people this is the best bill possible under difficult circumstances so we’re looking at Thursday and going into the next week after that.

Roberts adds one caveat to Senator Reid's decision.

ROBERTS: If Harry fills the tree and says up or down...and I’m only going to allow 4 or 5 amendments, the farm bill is in trouble. If we can agree on the number of amendments and we can limit the non-Germain amendments, I think we have a shot. If notm Harry does have that control just to control it and Republicans will not permit a discussion of this kind of magnitude to be limited to just a certain amount of amendments to be decided by Harry.

Roberts says they're working hard to determine if they have the 60 votes to invoke cloture - which means they would move directly to discussion of the farm bill. Roberts says he's confident and more optimistic than he was a few weeks ago.

ROBERTS: We’re trying every way to accommodate as best we can the rice and peanuts folks and some of the others that have some druthers on the farm bill but this isn’t like “give me what I used to have or I won’t play ball.” If you don’t play ball you have to accept part of the responsibility that there may not be a bill.

The House Ag Committee is looking to mark up the bill during June - and Committee Chairman Frank Lucas - along with Ranking Member Collin Peterson - is in support of including target prices and countercyclical payments in the House version of the bill. The Congressional Budget Office scored the Senate Ag Committee version of the farm bill last week and stated it would save nearly 23.6-billion dollars between 2013 and 2022 - the period that the new farm bill would cover.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.