Longtime Republican Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley is blaming Senate Ag Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) for holding up farm bill progress. Grassley says Stabenow refuses to move money around in a farm bill whose spending size was frozen by budget writers.
“Unless we can transfer money from one part of the farm bill to another, which until now, Stabenow doesn’t want to do, the chances of getting more money for almost anything, and we’ve got 85 percent of the bill is nutrition,” says Grassley.
Stabenow earlier refused to discuss differences with Ag Republicans led by Arkansas’ John Boozman but said the two had pressed Secretary Tom Vilsack to up farm bill spending with CCC money. Grassley predicts the 2018 farm bill that expired Sunday will have to be extended by at least one year, leaving producers with outdated crop supports.
Separately, Grassley hopes the Supreme Court this term will overturn a 1980s ruling involving Chevron that gives deference to agency bureaucrats.
“There’s a good chance that Chevron will be overturned, sending a message to the Congress that we should be more specific in the legislation we write, and then, sending a message to the bureaucrats that you can’t interpret any statute beyond what the statute itself, says,” according to Grassley.
Pointing to WOTUS, where EPA claims it’s abiding by a high court ruling earlier this year, but that Grassley claims “can still be manipulated by bureaucrats out at the grassroots to say something is a wetland and can’t be disturbed when it really isn’t a wetland.”
Grassley argues that WOTUS needs more clarification, and if the Supreme Court overturns the Chevron decision, it will strengthen the ‘checks and balances’ of government.