Bipartisanship alive in Washington as Congress works to help farmers, others hurt by pandemic, writes rural editor

Art Cullen

Though Democrats and Republicans are often miles apart in their ideology (and say so loudly, for the benefit of their constituencies), bipartisanship is alive and well in Congress as lawmakers work together on pressing issues such as climate change, writes Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Art Cullen for The Washington Post. Cullen co-owns and edits the Storm Lake Times in northwest Iowa.

For example, the Biden-supported Growing Climate Solutions Act passed the Senate 92 to 8 last week, co-sponsored by Mike Braun, a conservative Republican from Indiana, and supported by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. "The bill paves the way for a national carbon-credit trading market, something that Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) has pursued for years," Cullen reports. "The bill, which enjoys bipartisan support in the House, directs the Agriculture Department to establish a framework based in science by which polluters could buy offset credits from farmers and foresters to plant crops that sequester carbon."

But such widespread support wasn't always feasible, he writes. "What changed? In a word: farmers. They’ve been buffeted by floods, devastating spikes of heat and drought all in the span of a year, for several seasons now. They’re ripping out crops in California. Cattle herds are thinning in the parched Dakotas. Iowa producers are digging deeper wells to slop 23 million hogs as aquifers drop. Drought stalks half the country," Cullen writes. "The Senate Agriculture Committee has always been driven more by regional interests than party allegiance. The South protects cotton and rice, the Upper Midwest corn and ethanol, the Great Plains wheat and water. Now, almost everyone is climbing aboard the climate action wagon because time is short, and they recognize it."

In 2017 Cullen and his family won the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues' Tom and Pat Gish Award for excellence in rural journalism.