Wheat Can’t Wait For Pols To Make Hay

Voters in farm country played a big role in sending a Republican majority to Congress. Their reward? A role as victim in a political train wreck.

Certainly, many with a long view hope Congress and President Clinton eventually might enact the GOP’s plan to phase out federal crop subsidies and rules. And eventually, a pig might learn to fly.

But in the meantime, spring is coming. Farmers and their bankers need to make decisions, soon, regarding what they’ll plant and spend.

Those decisions are difficult to make when farmers don’t know what subsidies, market rules and program obligations will apply to their operations in the coming year.

Given the intensely regulated nature of their business, the cornerstone of this region’s economy, that’s quite a headache.

For now, sincere reformers like Eastern Washington Rep. George Nethercutt still argue for enactment of the GOP’s “Freedom to Farm” bill and the equally important “Farm Bill II.” But time is running out for a nation full of farmers who have businesses to run.

Congress and the president, who have an election to win, seem as a group to be forgetting the people they serve.

The Freedom to Farm bill is tangled in the federal budget stalemate, as well as in a big policy disagreement. This bill would repeal the familiar crop subsidies, which vary depending on market prices for the crops. It would replace subsidies with a cash grant, independent of market prices, that would taper down to zero over seven years. President Clinton opposes automatic handouts and contends federal aid should be given only as market prices create a need for it. This dispute has yet to be settled. The politicians have focused on urban issues such as Medicaid, instead.

Farm Bill II is even further from enactment. It’s floating around congressional committees in pieces. It does have merit, if Congress intends for farmers to compete unaided in the global market. If the government won’t help farmers, it shouldn’t hamstring them, either, by deterring the use of proven chemicals on minor crops, by confiscating minor wetlands and by obstructing exports to hungry nations involved in political disputes.

But these, too, are controversial proposals. As the posturing of this election year intensifies, the partisan combatants most likely will grow less willing to allow each other anything resembling an achievement.

The best interests of farmers and the economy demand either an immediate resolution of the reform proposals, or a temporary settlement that would continue the familiar farm programs of recent years, imperfect as they are, until the madness of the campaign season has passed.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board