Philip Brasher

Republicans and Democrats are trading accusations of hypocrisy over renewing the $500,000 Section 179 business expensing allowance and other expired tax benefits.

Congressional critics of crop insurance are citing the rising cost estimates for the 2014 farm bills commodity programs to justify slashing growers premium subsidies.

A Texas judges order that has indefinitely delayed some of President Obamas executive actions on immigration could benefit farms and processors that rely on immigrant labor.

Negotiations continue in the Senate over a bill that would grant President Obama trade promotion authority, a key step toward closing a new Pacific Rim trade agreement.

A House Republican bid to roll back some Dodd-Frank regulations through reauthorization of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is running into a wall of Democratic opposition. The White House threatened this week to veto the bill (HR 2289), and only two Democrats

ethanol, Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, Renewable Fuels Standard, RFS, Scott Irwin, University of Illinois, Timothy Cheung, ClearView Energy Partners, USDA, Tom Vilsack, Rural Energy for America Program, REAP, National Chicken Council,

ethanol, RFS, Renewable Fuels Standard, RFS, EPA, ClearView, Eric Washburn, Bracewell and Giulian,

Obama, trade, Trade Promotion Authority, TPA, Kevin McCarth, HR 1890, Sander Levin, House Ways and Means, Trans-Pacific Partnership, TPP, Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, T-TIP, TTIP, Mike Conaway, AFL-CIO

While the timing for TPA remains up in the air, the House is scheduled to vote next on bills to repeal country-of-origin labeling (COOL) requirements for meat (HR 2393) and to reauthorize the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will vote sometime in the next two weeks on a bill to kill the rule re-defining what streams, ditches and wetlands will be regulated under the Clean Water Act as waters of the United States (WOTUS).