• The results don’t point to a seismic shift that will upend the green industry.
• Gridlock caused by intraparty disagreement may make passing legislation such as the 2023 Farm Bill and funding the government more difficult.
• That stress will bring on challenges or at least uncertainty for some growers, producers and green industry professionals.
With the dust still settling in some races, the Fairfax, Virginia-based Irrigation Association’s Advocacy Director Nathan Bowen breaks down some of the key takeaways from this year’s midterms.
According to Bowen, the outcomes of the midterms suggest there will be a few identifiable priority shifts in irrigation-related policy but that the increased likelihood of political gridlock could also have an impact on the industry.
“Quite frankly, I think we’re fairly status quo,” he says. “We appear to be entering a period of divided government where one political party no longer controls the entire process and largescale policy shifts will be difficult. Going into this, the House was widely expected to flip, and the Senate was the big uncertainty. From my perspective, there weren’t as many incumbents on key committees for our industry who lost their seats as we would have expected in a typical midterm election.”
Bowen says that although these election outcomes suggest a certain degree of stability for the irrigation industry, that doesn’t mean nothing has changed. Issues like the H-2B visa program — a widely-used program in the landscape industry — could benefit from leadership changes on key committees in both the House and Senate.
For the agriculture industry, the ag committee is an institution to keep an eye on.
“With the Ag Committee specifically, while there haven’t been many that have lost [their election] as we expected, there have been a few retirements that I think will make an impact,” Bowen says.
He points out Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Illinois, and Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Illinois, as potentially impactful departures from the committee.
“Both of those people were people known to work across the aisle,” he says. “I think with them leaving, you could see further polarization on the Ag Committee. If the House switches, you’re going to see different priorities because of that. You’re going to see less emphasis on nutrition programs, less emphasis on climate change. You’ll see more emphasis on crop insurance.”
A shift in priorities due to deeper opposition within the committee is a mirror to what might happen on the House floor, Bowen says, even within the parties themselves.
“So for the Republican conference — this is assuming that they wind up winning — one of the big questions is ‘How unified are they?’” Bowen says. “When we saw them in power back during the Ryan and Boehner years, it was a very hard conference for leadership to wrangle. So on those must-pass votes like government funding, when leadership needed their members to vote a certain way, they had a really hard time doing that.”
With consequential legislation in question, the problem will be gridlock, Bowen says.
“I think whenever you have gridlock that prevents government funding, that has really significant ramifications on the industry, Bowen says. “For example, if the USDA shuts down getting checks out the door and all those things that producers rely on, that all starts screeching to a halt.”
Bowen says the margins of control in the House will ultimately determine which party is able to exert more decisive control which will end up determining how much compromise is necessary for passing bills including the 2023 Farm Bill.
“Traditionally, the farm bill has brought together a bipartisan coalition of urban and rural lawmakers from Republican and Democratic parties,” Bowen says. “The rural Republicans like the stuff for the farmers, the urban Democrats like the stuff for nutrition. It’s that grand coalition that gets it across the finish line. What you have seen in recent farm bills is that it is getting increasingly more difficult to do.”
