Environmental groups and right-leaning think tanks joined Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) today in accusing leaders of the Senate and House Agriculture committees of working behind closed doors on a farm bill that would be tucked into an overall deficit reduction package.

Leaders of the Agriculture committees are planning to submit recommendations next week to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, the so-called supercommittee, to cut up to $23 billion from agriculture. Those recommendations will likely cut billions of dollars from conservation, according to published reports on the discussions.

Blumenauer and the organizations told reporters today that submitting such a proposal without input from the Agriculture panels or the whole Congress amounts to a "secret" farm bill.

They called for Senate Agriculture Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and ranking member Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), and House Agriculture Chairman Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) and ranking member Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) to let their proposal go through the congressional process as a bill with amendments.

Committee leaders are "replicating what got us into this deficit mess in the first place," Blumenauer said, "not really looking at the big picture, not debating, not looking at the long-term consequences, not subjecting it to public scrutiny. That would be a tremendous mistake."

Speaking yesterday on the radio program "Oklahoma Farm Report," Lucas defended the work of Agriculture Committee leaders and praised their bipartisanship. He hinted at a plan to consolidate conservation programs and said that the entire House Agriculture panel would be able to review what emerges from the supercommittee process.

In response to a question about whether there could be a farm bill written through that process, Lucas said, "It is possible. Not certain -- but it is possible."

Blumenauer today offered his own farm bill recommendations that he said he hoped would guide lawmakers as they decide whether to accept or reject the Agriculture committees' leaders' suggestions.

Backing Blumenauer are two environmental groups, the Environmental Working Group and Defenders of Wildlife, and two fiscal conservative think tanks, the American Enterprise Institute and Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Blumenauer's and the groups' proposal includes consolidating farm conservation programs into a performance-based system, where landowners would be paid for their projects' outcomes rather than for their list of projects. For example, more value would be attached to a wetlands restoration that provides habitat for an endangered species than would be given to one that benefits a common frog.

Blumenauer said the farm bill has the potential to be "the most environmental bill of this Congress."

Tim Male, Defenders of Wildlife's vice president for conservation policy, praised the proposal as "a smart new way to do conservation" but pointed to some challenges in measuring project benefits and outcomes.

The Oregon Democrat proposed eliminating direct payments to farmers, saying most subsidies go to large agribusinesses, and limiting other types of farm subsidies. He also called for reforms to crop insurance, including making payments contingent on meeting conservation minimums.

The proposal was praised by Henry Olsen, director of AEI's National Research Institute. He called subsidies a "government taxpayer bonus for showing up and doing their job."

Earlier this year, AEI released farm bill studies that recommended consolidating conservation programs and getting rid of biofuel tax credits and the renewable fuel standard in favor of a cap-and-trade system and other policies (Greenwire, July 12).

Although the four strange-bedfellow backers of Blumenauer's plan do not always see eye to eye, they are part of a "broad coalition" that believes "the current system is not delivering as it should," said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, a dedicated foe of agriculture subsidies.

As for the writing of the 2012 farm bill, "we want an open process, we want a public process, we want a Democratic process," Cook said.