So the Senate did not succeed at ending debate on the Farm Bill, and a variety of voices are predicting:

• (A) As soon as the Senate returns in December, something will happen;
• (B) nothing happening for at least 3 months;
• (C) a long term extension, probably until 2009;
• (D) short term extensions until something does happen.

Ken Cook over at EWG has an excellent piece on the prospects for an extension at the rejuvenated Mulch Blog, which includes this gem of a paragraph:

Editorial writers at every paper in the country will lock the "Auto-Scorn" button on their keyboards (that's F666, btw). The San Francisco Chronicle will launch a new insert, "More Ways The Farm Bill Sucks Weekly." The farm bill will rise ever higher on the lists of failures that have dragged congressional approval ratings ever lower, ever closer, to single digits.

Of course, nobody really knows how this will play out yet, so we’ll take a look at a couple of these scenarios. For those of you not all that interested in politics, I suggest you stop right here.

December:

Probably the least likely. Today Tom Harkin said that he would force another cloture vote as soon as the Senate returned, but we doubt it. Why would anyone think the vote would be any different?  Unless, of course, Senators get so much grief in the next two weeks from their constituents about not accomplishing anything on the farm bill that they feel the need to do something. But that is unlikely, given that the real obstacle to progress seems to be politics at the Senate leadership level, not Agriculture Committee Senators. The Ag Committee folks clearly want to accomplish something.

And the Senate will already have a very full plate. They almost certainly will not take up any legislation they don’t have to. Just to start, they have to tackle ELEVEN appropriations bills. (Here’s a good overview of remaining legislation).

January:

Not happening. You have appropriations bills coming back to Congress that the President will have vetoed. And the presidential politics pandemonium will be at its peak.

February-March-April

If I had to put money on when the Farm Bill would actually pass, this would be it. By mid-February we should know who the presidential nominees are, and (hopefully) some sort of resolution will have been reached on appropriations bills. Opinions vary, but this is also probably the latest you can pass a farm bill without having to pass some sort of extension of the current farm bill.

One or Two Year Extension:

I think this is unlikely, even though House Republicans are already pushing for it, and Tom Harkin has suggested it as well. If an extension is absolutely needed, I think it is more likely that Congress will pass 1-3 month extensions as needed. If you have a one or two year extension, many Senators will offer the same amendments they are offering on the next farm bill anyway. I bet Senator Grassley would offer his payment limits amendment, that’s for sure. So if you’re going to go through all those headaches, why not just pass a new farm bill?

Also, a two year extension means that both the House and Senate will have to write their farm bills all over again, since a new Congress will be in session. Writing in committee probably wouldn’t be that hard, given what they’ve already done. But the committees would probably have even less money to deal due to changed Congressional Budget Office forecasts. And both the House and the Senate would have to redo their budget maneuvers to get more money for the farm bill. In the House, that money came from Ways and Means, and in the Senate it came from the Finance Committee. Both of them would have to tackle farm bill funding stuff again. And you would have yet another floor fight in the House over the farm bill. I seriously doubt anyone wants that, and it is no wonder House Ag Committee chair Collin Peterson is strongly opposed to an extension. For this reason, I think an extension past 2008 is very unlikely (unless a farm bill is vetoed by the President).

I could pontificate more, but it's Friday. I’m betting on March. By the way, Chris Clayton of DTN is running a pool on this very topic, and you can go over and submit your guess until Thanksgiving (you do have to register, though).