Thursday, January 10, 2013

Cut to the Chase -- Déjà Vu All Over Again

By Blake Hurst
“Oh, the line forms on the right, babe, now that Macky's back in town,” Mack the Knife.
Yes, they’re back in town, both in Jefferson City and Washington, D.C. The Missouri Legislature and the U.S. Congress have started new sessions, and Missouri Farm Bureau has a list of priority issues that have been identified by our members. Yep, and I suppose we tend to line up on the right, or at least on the right side of the issues that concern our members.
In Jefferson City, we’ll be working on initiative petition reform. Missouri voters need access to information on both sides of ballot proposals, like voters have in most other states with the ballot initiative process. Proposed legislation provides for a public comment period and public hearing and requires more information to be posted online, according to Missouri Farm Bureau’s director of state and local affairs, Leslie Holloway. We’ve got support from other citizen groups, including the REA and the Chamber of Commerce, and we think we have a great chance of passing this needed legislation.
We’re also working to guarantee Missouri farmers’ right to raise livestock. Animal rights activists have attempted to restrict production agriculture in various ways in several states. We support a proposed constitutional amendment protecting the rights of farmers and ranchers to conduct agricultural production activities.
In Washington D.C., we’ll be working to pass a farm bill. Or like Yogi Berra might say, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” The Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008 (aka the farm bill) expired last September and was finally extended until September 30 of this year in the fiscal cliff legislation. All the work done last year on the new farm bill was for naught.
Since this is a new Congress, we’ll have to start all over again. Not only that, but we’re sure to have less money in the budget for farm programs. That’s bad news for everybody in agriculture, but especially bad news for dairy producers, who had worked hard to get a new dairy program included in both the House and Senate versions of the farm bill.  
There is some good news. For the first time in 12 years, we won’t be working on estate tax reform legislation. Now, that doesn’t mean we’ve given up on our goal of repealing the estate tax, but rather that Congress has finally voted on a permanent estate tax. We’d still like to see repeal, but at least farmers have certainty and the ability to plan.
We’ll still be working to protect farmers from interpretations of the Clean Water Act that would be very harmful to agriculture, and we’ll work to roll back burdensome regulations wherever we can.
Most importantly, we’ll work to bring some sanity to the budget situation in Washington. We can’t continue to spend like we have been, and none of us can afford to pay the taxes necessary to support our present federal government. Tough decisions will have to be made in the very near future to improve the financial situation of our nation. Farmers and ranchers often have to make those kinds of decisions to protect our businesses and families, and we expect nothing less of our nation’s leaders.

(Blake Hurst, of Westboro, Mo., is the president of Missouri Farm Bureau, the state’s largest farm organization.)

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