Farm Bill Timing is Moving Target

When we'll have the next farm bill remains uncertain as key farm-state senators continue to offer many timelines for when it will be ready.The timeline is particularly murky when one views recent farm bill action, or inaction. House Agriculture Committee Chairman Mike Conaway, R., Texas, initially said he wants a new farm bill in place by the end of this year, but recently has noted it could take into the first quarter of 2018. The Senate has suggested it wants to finish a bill by the end of the year, with Sen. Chuck Grassley, R., Iowa, saying his talks with farm bill leaders signal a bill "by Christmas" this year.However, with funding needs growing for requested changes to the 2014 Farm Bill, some are upping their odds of a significant impasse among some key farm-state lawmakers. If so, they say, there could be a need for a one-year extension of the current farm bill in order for a new farm bill to be completed later.The later-rather-than-sooner timeline argument usually points to what Senate Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Debbie Stabenow, D., Mich., will do during the farm bill debate. “If she does not get what she wants,” one veteran farm bill watcher said, “she will make that an issue in her upcoming re-election” and thus “the farm bill timeline would linger.”EPA Counters Criticism of WOTUS Economic AnalysisAn economic analysis of the Obama-era Waters of the U.S. (WOTUS) rule undertaken by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) relied on permitting data from years after the economic recession ended, the agency said, countering accusations its analysis was limited to the period when the downturn was taking place.EPA's study of the 2015 rule's costs and benefits was more comprehensive than critics claimed, Al McGartland, head of the agency's National Center for Environmental Economics, told Bloomberg BNA. Critics have alleged EPA relied on permitting data from two years during the economic recession, when construction and manufacturing would have been at their lowest, in its study of costs and benefits of the rule. EPA used that same data when it issued the rule in 2015 and again this year as the Trump administration proposed reworking the rule.EPA did use permitting data from Fiscal 2009 and 2010 when it initially proposed the rule, McGartland acknowledged. But the agency relied on five years of data for the economic analysis of the final rule. The updated analysis for the 2015 final rule came in response to criticism from the Waters Advocacy Coalition, an industry-led coalition of manufacturers, farmers, miners, road builders and businesses that had hired David Sunding, of the University of California, Berkeley, to critique the analysis of the proposal."In fact, to ensure EPA did not understate permit activity, EPA looked at the range of permitting activity from 2009 through 2014 and used the maximum number of permits in any given year," McGartland said. Specifically, the analysis calculated the overall impact by using the maximum number of individual permits to dredge and fill wetlands and streams that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued in Fiscal 2009 and the maximum number of general permits issued in 2013, McGartland added.