By ANN HINCH

Associate Editor

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Nationally, last week’s midterm elections showed a split decision overall for voters, turning House control over to Democrats in 2019 while maintaining a Republican majority in the Senate.

The House and Senate has reconvened in Washington, D.C., for four days of work this week, then both are off next week for the Thanksgiving holiday. Senators will return to D.C. on Nov. 26 and House representatives, the following day, and will be in session for three weeks before adjourning for the year.

The American Soybean Assoc. (ASA) is hopeful now that the midterms are over, bipartisan work on finalizing a new farm bill can continue and that the Senate and House conference committee can resolve differences in the two chambers’ versions to enact a final five-year bill before the end of this year.

Farmers are caught between a farm bill that expired on Sept. 30 – and has not been extended by Congress – and the fact there is no new legislation in place yet.

“In addition to support from farm programs, funding for the Foreign Market Development program and Market Access Program is needed,” said ASA President John Heisdorffer. “FMD funding has already lapsed and MAP funding will run out at year’s end. These programs are critical to the soybean industry, particularly with the need to open and expand markets to offset sales lost to China.”

Even the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) released a statement saying Congress must pass a new farm bill to ensure farmers’ security because it helps drive equipment manufacturing employment. It stated the trade dispute with China and the decision to impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum has had a negative impact on equipment manufacturing.

AEM said U.S. manufacturers face higher production costs “while the impact of retaliatory tariffs by trading partners hurt the U.S. agriculture sector and threaten to reduce the domestic sales of agriculture equipment.” It hopes to see bipartisan work on trade agreements, in addition to new markets for U.S. goods.

Colin Woodall, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) senior vice president for government affairs, wasn’t surprised by the election results.

“Just because there’s a change (in House leadership) does not mean that we are dead in the water when it comes to cattlemen’s policy priorities,” he said in a podcast last week, adding the NCBA has “quite a few Democratic friends” there, including Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson, likely to be chair of the House Agriculture Committee.

Woodall noted Peterson has said he is not looking to rewrite the House version of the new farm bill, should a final version not pass in 2018 and the matter carry over to next year. Woodall also sees the next several weeks’ lame-duck session as a “race to the finish line” by Republicans to get as much of their legislation passed as possible before losing their full Congressional majority.

“I believe this Congress is going to be all about gridlock,” he said of 2019, believing the House will spend more time on oversight of the Trump administration. The Senate, he thinks, will be doing two things: thwarting House legislation the Senate Republicans don’t want, and approving as many Trump judicial and administration nominees as possible – which Woodall said has a big impact on cattle producers.

“A Congress that doesn’t do much is actually a good Congress. We don’t need a whole lot of new bills coming at us, but every once in a while there are things we need them to do, and modernization of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is one of those,” he said.

Over the past two years, he explained NCBA worked with like-minded and activist groups to put together a proposed bill modifying the ESA that all parties could live with. They submitted it to the Senate, where it languished in the Environment and Public Works Committee. Woodall doesn’t think it will move in the lame-duck session and that the opportunity for an ESA change has passed.