By The Oregonian Editorial Board

It should not be that hard for Congress to pass a five-year farm bill. Congresses have managed to do it ever since World War II, setting a clear, if sometimes controversial, direction for American agriculture, a vital part of the U.S. economy.

The need is particularly pressing in the middle of an agricultural crisis, when about two-thirds of the country, including most of the heartland, is being crunched by the worst drought in decades.

Yet because of a spectacular failure in the House of Representatives, the farm bill will lapse this Sunday for the first time since 1949. At a time of considerable agricultural pressure, says Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., the only Northwesterner on the House Agriculture Committee, "We are adding to the uncertainty rather than creating certainty."

This lapse not only limits the federal response to the drought, it hurts other disaster relief, such as help for forest fire-blistered southeast Oregon ranchers. It suspends agricultural conservation programs, leaving farmers with minimal direction. It blocks $1 billion in research and support headed toward Northwest specialty crops, and kicks away real reform of price supports, sending billions largely to large corporations harvesting six major crops.

The most controversial and largest element in the farm program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) that takes up about 75 percent of the funding, will continue at its present level until next March. But who knows if the House will have gotten itself together even by then.

This was not actually necessary. The Senate passed a farm bill, by the unusually bipartisan vote of 62-35, which made some cuts to food stamps but also pared back some agricultural price support programs. It claimed overall savings of $23 billion, although a potentially costly crop insurance addition could cut into that.

The House Agriculture Committee also passed a farm bill by a bipartisan vote, 35-11. The bill was flawed, with an outsized food stamp cut, but that might have been adjusted in conference committee -- if it ever got off the House floor. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, refused to bring it to the House floor either in July or in the short September session, reportedly because many House Republicans wouldn't vote for it without even deeper food stamp cuts. A Republican-Democratic alliance might have provided a majority, but that's not how the current House rolls.

This failure adds to the already overwhelming to-do list for the lame-duck post-election session, when Washington thinks (or hopes) that partisan feelings will have eased. But it's not encouraging that the House, faced with the challenges of a sizable deficit and a looming "fiscal cliff," has trouble with even relatively ordinary assignments.

The forecast looks cloudy even if you're not a farmer.

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