January, 2018
Lincoln -- As readers of this blog know, I believe our two-party system of government works best when each party is competitive.
One party domination leads to trouble, be it one party or another. Maryland, where I spend considerable time, has been dominated by Democrats, which has led to trouble. One of the Maryland congressional districts was badly gerrymandered to favor a Democrat and the matter is now before the U.S. Supreme Court. Even the incumbent admits that the district must be redrawn. In the last gubernatorial election, Maryland Democrats put up a candidate with a flawed record, with the expectation he would win because of his party affiliation. Marylanders rejected him and elected a moderate Republican. These developments are forcing both parties to be more responsible and competitive, and Maryland will be the better for it.
Nebraska is dominated by Republicans, which has also led to trouble. Property taxes are unreasonably high, especially for farmers; the state's agricultural economy is among the worst in the country; the prison system is a mess; the governor is fighting with the university; the all-Republican congressional delegation takes voting orders from the Republican congressional leadership, lock-step, Nebraska interests be damned.
Nebraska's Second Congressional District has a history of being well-contested. It voted for Obama in 2008 and elected a Democrat in 2014, but those Democratic victories have been reversed. Freshman Republican Congressman Don Bacon could be in trouble, however, if a Democrat mounted an effective campaign against him, focusing especially on his inability to do anything for his district and the state from his seat on the House Agriculture Committee.
Bacon does not understand that agriculture in Nebraska is in huge trouble and needs both a much more supportive national policy and a voice to yell in protest until it happens.
Instead, Bacon is falling in line with his Republican committee chairman, Mike Conaway of Texas, who thinks all in rural America is just fine* and will bring out of his committee a 2018 Farm Bill that will do nothing for Nebraska, except perhaps drive crop prices even lower.
The kind of Farm Bill Bacon should be supporting, but won't, is one that would
• bring jobs and economic activity to the heartland while growing healthier food, as outlined in the new report from the St. Louis Fed and USDA, Harvesting Opportunity.
• consider topsoil-as-infrastucture and save our precious natural resource by funding shovel-ready conservation projects and expanding the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP).
• address the disasterous decline in rural health, particularly the growing epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and opiod addition, by mobilizing existing health and nutrition networks such as Cooperative Extension and rural hospitals.
• launch immediate new agriculture research efforts into use of grasslands as carbon sinks and into the relationship between increasing CO2 levels and declining nutrition levels in food.
• restore the GIPSA rule protecting family farmers from unfair multinational companies who want to run them out of the livestock business. (Read the bi-partisan Grassley-Tester protest letter here.)
• reform the crop insurance program to save $3.4 billion over the next ten years, as estimated by CBO, without hurting the program.
• use the savings to fund the needs listed above, with no net cost to the Farm Bill.
The kind of language Bacon should be using is to make it clear in no uncertain terms to his President that killing NAFTA and TPP is killing Nebraska agriculture, that Nebraskans need real health care coverage and not closed hospitals, that wasteful spending in the Farm Bill needs to be cut and redirected to efforts that will actually help the Nebraska economy. Instead, he is silent.
If Bacon continues to do nothing from his seat on the House Agriculture Committee, a savvy Democrat who knows how dependent the Second District is on agriculture may come in and take the seat back. That person would campaign not just on the Farm Bill, but also on the link between the poor Nebraska ag economy and the inability of state government to provide property tax relief. Voters will make the connection if the candidate does, because there's no avoiding it.
A Democrat should also be poised to receive protest votes from those who are tired of one-party rule in Nebraska and want to send the Republican Party a message that its domination has served Nebraska citizens poorly.
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* Among Conaway's pollyanna views: he states that "water is cleaner" when in fact nitrate pollution is plaguing small Nebraska towns and cities; he believes there has been a "proliferation of wildlife habitat" when most everyone knows just the opposite has been occurring. Pollinators are disappearing; bees must now be transported across country to pollinate crops.
