Another serious cliff resulting from the silly way Congress does business concerns the failure to pass a farm bill earlier this year. The Senate passed its own with bipartisan support, the House Agriculture Committee passed a version and then the House leadership refused to put that onto the floor for a variety of reasons. They broke in September without a plan for passage, and the lame duck session has been consumed by negotiations through the media on the fiscal slope, without addressing the farm bill.

The farm bill expired today, reverting some programs back to a 1949 level and totally eliminating others. The other day I looked at the consequences of expiration, and while many elements didn’t have much of an impact until the end of the year, in particular milk and dairy farmers were likely to feel the pinch [...]