Discussing the farm bill at the recent National Rural Electric Cooperative Association Summit on Rural America are, from left, House Agriculture Committee ranking member Collin Peterson, D-Minn.; Chuck Conner of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, and House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla. (Jerry Hagstrom/The Hagstrom Report)

House Agriculture Committee ranking member Collin Peterson, D-Minn., said recently that the 2014 farm bill written when Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., chaired the committee, may last 20 years — but would not if Lucas had won his campaign to replace the 1949 and 1938 laws with the 2014 law.

Writing a new farm bill in the future may be so difficult that “we could end up having Frank Lucas’ bill being permanent law for the next 20 years and that would be good,” Peterson said during a June 11 panel discussion at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association’s Summit on Rural America.

Peterson was chairman when the 2008 farm bill was written and still chairman when debate began on the 2014 bill, but became ranking member after the Republicans captured control of the House in the 2010 elections.

Under the current system, portions of the 1938 and 1949 farm laws remain in place but are suspended for the provisions under the 2004 bill.

Lucas wanted to make the 2014 farm bill the underlying law, but Peterson said that if the 2014 law were in place for five years and it came time to write a new farm bill in 2018, Congress might simply let is expire rather than extend it unless program spending were cut.

But faced with the prospect of the 1938 and 1949 acts coming into play, extending the 2014 law would look like a good alternative, Peterson said.

“With permanent law, all of a sudden you are looking at $9 corn, $40 milk, $16 wheat, [and] extending the current law looks pretty reasonable,” Peterson said.

Lucas, who appeared on the same panel, did not respond to Peterson’s theory but commented on the political process.

The farm bill, Lucas said, is “a reflection of the Congress as a whole. The attacks come from well-intended members who don’t quite understand the amendments handed to them.

The farmer, he noted, doesn’t care much about crop insurance, but “his banker, his wife and his landlord do care about it.”

The theme of the conference was rural development and many of the attendees cared more about utility financing and other rural development programs, but Lucas said rural development programs “were viewed as an incidental to the process.”

Because the money for those programs is appropriated rather than a part of mandatory spending, “there was no opposition” to them, he added.

The rural development title also includes housing, water and sewer programs for the poorest areas of rural America and renewable energy programs. Peterson said the rural development programs are important to members “from districts that are rural but not agricultural.”

Peterson also said that the Universal Service Fund for telephones should be used to bring high-speed Internet service to those areas that do not have it.

Both Lucas and Peterson said they longed for the old days of congressional organization when seniority and committee leadership were more important.

Peterson noted that since he became ranking member, there have been three Republican chairmen because the Republicans have restricted the number of years a member can be at the top of a committee.

But Peterson said the Democrats’ leadership problems go back to 1974, when the Democrats decided that the caucus, rather than each committee, would elect the chairs. That, he said, has led to management from leadership aides on both sides of the aisle — “people who have no clue.”

Lucas said that on the Republican side, the change stemmed from a decision in 1995 when the Republicans took over and the leadership made a decision “to shift away from the [former House Speaker] Sam Rayburn [D-Texas] model.”

“Both parties have attempted in the last 20 years both have attempted to reduce the power of the chairmen and ranking members. I believe that is a mistake. That is an underlying issue in Congress itself,” Lucas said.

Lucas concluded he doesn’t know whether anyone will again amass the power of Rep. Jamie Whitten, D-Miss., who chaired the House Appropriations Committee from 1979 until 1992 and was known as the unofficial secretary of Agriculture.

Noting that Whitten was “sworn in just before Pearl Harbor and left in 1995,” Lucas said, “I don’t know whether anyone can accumulate that power because the Republicans won’t have longstanding chairmen.”