It's very free-market

 

The latest conservative brainwave? Drive up the cost of milk and cost the taxpayers a bundle:

Talk about the cows coming home.

Not one, but three different farm bill extensions were filed late Saturday night by House Republicans, who are caught in a New Year’s imbroglio over milk prices after their refusal to allow floor debate on a more comprehensive five-year alternative in this session of Congress.

 Absent some agreement, a 1949 farm law kicks in Jan. 1. It will require the Agriculture Department to begin buying up dairy products at a rate of $38.54 per hundredweight, more than double the prevailing price today. No one truly knows the immediate impact, but the threat of $6 to $7 per gallon of milk brought President Barack Obama off the sidelines Friday in what’s become a revealing sideshow amid the larger year-end confrontation over taxes and budget cuts.

... It reads like a pint-sized satire but with everyman effects: Just strike all those millionaires and their tax rates, and sub in mothers at the grocery store and milk mayhem.

In both cases, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is cast in the role of blocking votes that might allow the House to work its will. In both, House Republicans find themselves paying a price for an aggressive, take-no-prisoners legislative strategy all year that bet heavily on a Mitt Romney victory and post-election fixes that are no longer within reach.

... Nonetheless, this is a fight very much inside the Republican Party, whose candidates have benefited from campaign donations from both sides in the debate in recent years. The two big trade groups facing off are the IDFA for the processors and the National Milk Producers Federation for the farmers. Yet, the lines are not as clear as they might seem.