As the houses of Congress continue to negotiate a final budget for the new Farm Bill, serious discussion of policy reforms has been put on the back burner.

But controversial issues in the Farm Bill — such as farm program payment limits — have not completely faded away. Once the arguments about funding are settled, it'll be time for the Farm Bill conference committee to revisit policy reforms.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said Tuesday that the House and Senate are close to reaching an agreement on the total budget for the bill. A debate about payment limits, Grassley said, won't occur until next week at the earliest.

That debate will come on the heels of the release of studies showing that the farm program reforms that were passed by the House and Senate won't accomplish their intended goals.

One of those studies was conducted by Dan Owens of the Center for Rural Affairs. Owens examined federal farm program payments in seven states, and after applying the provisions passed in the House and Senate versions of the Farm Bill, concluded that virtually no one would be affected by the reforms.

The elimination of the so-called "three-entity rule" was considered a major reform and was passed by both chambers of Congress. The rule allowed farm operations to literally double their take by claiming payments for up to three individuals or corporate entities.

But nothing was done to change the "spouse rule," which allows married couples to double their farm program payments. Owens studied how the elimination of the three-entity rule would affect farm operations in Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Georgia and Montana.

"As it is now, you can double your limit through either the three-entity rule or the spouse rule," Owens explained in an interview with the Iowa Independent. "So if you're married, you can double your limit. So what we looked at was how many people using the three-entity rule were actually married." Married couples would be allowed to simply switch over from the three-entity rule to the spouse rule and continue to get double the limit, said Owens. "So elimination of the three-entity rule would have no impact on those individuals."

Owens is critical of those who touted the elimination of the three-entity rule as major reform, particularly Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn.

"Conrad said it's the biggest reform bill of all time. It turns out that's simply not the case. We couldn't find anybody under the House bill that will be impacted by the removal of the three-entity rule — at all. Not a single person," said Owens. "You can't call it reform if nobody's going to be impacted at all. And in fact under the House bill, there were people who would actually get increases if that became the law. The house bill actually increases the limit on direct payments."

In studying the impact of the Senate-passed Farm Bill, Owens said he was able to find a total of five individuals who would be impacted by the elimination of the three-entity rule.

The Center for Rural Affairs study is not the only evidence that the reforms passed by the House and Senate fail to rein in large farm program payments to wealthy landowners.

Grassley released a report of his own on Feb. 5 that analyzed the adjusted gross income limits that were passed by the House and Senate. Grassley had pushed for an amendment to the Senate bill that would have capped farm program payments at $250,000 per individual. That effort failed, but the House and Senate passed provisions that would exclude individuals from farm programs if their annual adjusted gross income was above a certain level.

Grassley's analysis of the AGI limits showed that there are glaring loopholes that can be exploited by large farm operations. "The House and Senate farm bills left loopholes that a 9630 John Deere tractor could drive through," said Grassley. "It was reform in name only."

High-income operators could easily spread out their income among corporate entities or spouses to avoid the limits; reinvesting income by expanding the farm would also create deductions and allow wealthy operators to slide by the limits.

Another loophole noted by Grassley involves the possibility that wealthy landowners could simply change their rental agreements to exploit the system. "High-income landlords might shift from 'share rents' to 'cash rents,'" said Grassley. "Somewhere around 36 percent of those who would lose farm payments under the Senate and House AGI limits are share rent landlords who will in all likelihood keep the payments flowing by changing to cash rents, thereby shifting risk and capital requirements to farmers."

Owens said the Center for Rural Affairs is disappointed with the "false reforms" in the two versions of the Farm Bill and said that Grassley's analysis is further proof that nothing has really changed. "Grassley's analysis shows that in fact the AGI limits are not going to do anything either," said Owens. "The two big pillars of reform here, removing the three-entity rule and lowering the adjusted gross income limit on participation, don't really seem to accomplish much at all."

Owens said that farm programs are important and enjoy widespread support around the nation — but only if the programs are targeted to benefit small and midsized family farms. "When you're sending out these multimillion-dollar subsidy checks to mega farms, that undermines the support nationally for farm programs. People start saying we don't need a farm program. But we do need a farm program. We just need one that works a lot better than the one we've got now."