Congress isn't very good at big bills — those phone-book-size proposals to transform policy on energy, transportation, immigration, or Social Security. It's especially tough when new thinking is required.

In complex bills, everybody wants something. Interest groups ramp up; lobbying is intense. Priorities fall victim to horsetrading. In the end, bills often are drained of meaning, and bloated fiscally. Reform hopes evaporate.

Those dangers lurk as House and Senate subcommittees craft the 2007 farm bill, which must pass by Sept. 30. Too much is at stake for Congress to revert to bad habits this time.

The farm bill covers aid to farmers, fair trade, nutrition for the poor, conservation, agricultural research, energy policy, forestry, and rural development. Predictably, various interests are competing for a cut of a limited pool of money.

What's different this year is the diverse coalition of politicians, farmers, taxpayer groups, environmentalists, and international nongovernmental groups jointly demanding changes to traditional farm subsidies. Ninety percent of farm-subsidy payments are channeled to growers of just five crops: wheat, rice, corn, soybeans and cotton.

That means fruit and vegetable growers in states like Pennsylvania, New Jersey and fecund California get next to nothing. Commercial farms, though just 17 percent of all farms, received 56 percent of the pot in 2004, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The system is unbalanced and unfair.

Current policy distorts international and domestic commodity prices, drives small and family farmers out of the market, favors crops of poor nutritional value, transfers billions in tax dollars to a select few producers, and condones poor land use. That must change.

In January, initial bills focused on improving America's food supply and environmental stewardship.

But beginning work this month, the agriculture committees seem to be plodding down a conventional trail, seemingly oblivious to cries for a radical shift from the 2002 bill.

In contrast, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Reps. Ron Kind, D-Wis., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., offer a sensible subsidy overhaul. Their bills replace four major subsidy programs with a "risk-management account" controlled by individuals to guard against steep price fluctuations. Farmers also could buy federally subsidized crop insurance.

The program would save $55 billion over 10 years, sponsors estimate. Some money would wisely go toward deficit reduction. The balance should be used to provide more food stamps, expand land conservation, research and commercialize biofuels, and shore up specialty crop markets.

This country needs better farm policy — to provide a farmer safety net, to protect the land, to rectify international trade inequity, to feed the poor. Congress should nurture the good seeds that have been planted.

— The Philadelphia Inquirer

• • • •At the end of the month, a law streamlining the process for approval of international trade deals will expire. Congress should renew it quickly.Approval would allow the next president, regardless of party, to continue prying open international markets.Continued progress on trade is in America's long-term best interests. We are the world's largest exporter. Our economy benefits from expanding foreign markets, and consumers benefit from the lower prices and increased choices provided by trade.Under the trade-promotion authority law — formerly called "fast-track" — trade deals presented to Congress must be approved or rejected within a certain period of time, without amendment. As a practical matter, this is essential for serious negotiations.Otherwise, our trading partners cannot be assured that commitments made during talks won't be yanked away by lawmakers, who represent local or regional constituencies rather than the entire country.Prospects for trade-promotion renewal rose recently after bipartisan approval of labor and environmental standards in two pending free-trade pacts, covering Peru and Panama.Congress should seize the political momentum provided by this breakthrough and renew trade-promotion authority. Exports make up about one-fifth of the U.S. economy, and support 20 percent of the nation's manufacturing jobs. Stalling progress on trade would put the United States at a severe disadvantage in an increasingly competitive global economy.

— The Kansas City Star