The good bureaucrats at FSA are between the rock of current law (the extension of the 2008 farm law) and a hard place--the certainty that direct payments aren't going to survive this Congress.
Why do I say "certainty"? Because all parties agree there needs to be more cutting, and direct payments was already on the block last year, so it will be one of the first candidates offered up this year. According to today's Farm Policy, cutting direct payments was already proposed in a Republican amendment to the Sandy disaster aid package: i.e., the Republican majority wanted to offset some of the disaster aid with cuts to spending and they included direct payments.
So the bottom line is that FSA has to act as if they were going to have direct payments, but we all know farmers won't see a nickel of them.
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