House Dems differ in their strategies to pass farm bill

Freshman Rep. Nancy Boyda (D-Kan.) will be whipping a farm bill on the House floor this week, but her message won’t be about saving her own political skin.

“You don’t tell a Democrat, ‘I need your vote because it will help me get elected,’” said Boyda, one of eight freshman Democrats on the House Agriculture Committee whose political future will be linked to the farm bill. “They’d be deeply offended.”

{mosads}But Rep. Earl Pomeroy (N.D.), one of two Democrats formally whipping the bill, said politics will be a big part of his pitch.

“Any majority that loses sight of the needs of all its members can lose its majority,” Pomeroy said. He said he’s seen it happen twice: once when he narrowly escaped defeat as a freshman in the 1994 Republican revolution and last year when moderate Republicans lost races after being forced by their leadership to vote like conservative Republicans.

Pomeroy said he would ask members of his caucus to support the farm bill to help out rural members of their caucus. Boyda said she will tell members the bill unanimously approved by the agriculture committee will prevent further consolidation of family farms while helping small farms in her district survive.

The bill is scheduled to hit the House floor on Thursday.

Democrats will be tested in the farm bill fight because the committee-approved bill is opposed by Democrats seeking deeper reforms.

Reps. Ron Kind (D-Wis.) and Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), along with Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Paul Ryan (R-Ohio), will unveil an amendment to the farm bill Tuesday that calls for more significant changes.

They will find support among charitable groups like Oxfam and government watchdog groups such as Consumers Against Government Waste that say the bill would hurt farmers in poor countries and wastes tax dollars.

But the reformers would appear to face an uphill climb this year. While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) voted in favor of a Kind amendment to the 2002 farm bill, that was in the context of a Republican Congress with a Republican Agriculture Committee chairman.

“Now you have a Democratic farm bill with a Democratic Congress,” Jaime Castaneda of the National Milk Producers Federation said. He said he doesn’t believe Kind will have the same ability to win votes this time around.

Pomeroy thinks Pelosi is proceeding smartly in her attempts to unify members of her caucus around the bill. He said Pelosi has infused the caucus with the understanding that its members must work together to maintain their majority.

At Pelosi’s urging, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) included reforms in the bill that would make it easier for Democrats from urban districts to vote for the bill. For example, it includes a provision to prevent wealthy farmers from receiving government subsidies.

At the same time, Pelosi didn’t push Peterson to go so far with reforms that they could hurt the eight Democrats on the committee. Freshman Democrat Zack Space (D-Ohio), who serves on the committee, said there’s not a farmer in his district who would be affected by a new ceiling that prevents individuals with adjusted gross incomes of $1 million from receiving subsidies, which is lower than the current $2.5 million ceiling.

Pelosi also worked with Peterson to get Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) to find $4 billion for additional nutrition funding, which would go toward improving the current food-stamp program. Rangel has yet to say how he’ll vote on the bill, but hasn’t indicated problems with the request and told The Hill Peterson and Pelosi had done a good job.

Space and Boyda are among many freshman Agriculture Committee Democrats who could be vulnerable in 2008. Space serves in the seat vacated by Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), who is now in prison in West Virginia, and President Bush won the district in 2004 with 57 percent of the vote. Bush carried Boyda’s district in 2004 with 62 percent of the vote.

Boyda also has turned aside support from the Democratic Frontline program that helps vulnerable caucus members, and has only collected $250 in donations from agriculture political action committees (PACs). Boyda said she hasn’t sought money from Washington PACs and has told people they’ll have access to her whether they contribute or not.

Still, her donations from agriculture PACs stand out in comparison with other freshman committee Democrats like Space ($7,750), and Indiana Reps. Brad Ellsworth ($13,750) and Joe Donnelly ($8,750), according to PoliticalMoneyLine, which tracks donations.  

In other freshman committee members’ districts, President Bush took 62 percent of the vote in Ellsworth’s district and at least 54 percent in the districts of Donnelly and Reps. Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Steve Kagen (Wis.) and Tim Mahoney (Fla.).

Some agriculture lobbyists agreed that if Democrats fail to move a farm bill, there could be consequences. “To the extent there are freshman members and they’re perceived as not carrying the bill, their jobs could be at risk,” the president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, Bob Stallman, said.