Are you optimistic?

Thanks for having me.

That's a great question.

We're always running into this situation where there's a lot to do in a short amount of time.

So, of course, January 3rd, a new Congress will happen.

And that means in December, we have a bunch of funding bills to get passed.

And there's a supplemental aid request of $12 billion of farm aid.

If it does not get done in the lame duck, do you start over with a new Congress or with so much work having been done so far? I mean, does that carry over or do you just start over?

I guess my question for you is, what's going on in Iowa? Why are all of these races suddenly competitive?

Yeah, Iowa is always a case study.

You know what I mean? We have caucuses.

People are thinking about local politics and thinking about federal races way before anyone else in the country.

So inherently, Iowa is a good case study for what's happening in Republican politics.

But also, right now, it's a case study for what happens when you introduce moderate candidates with issues that really matter to the citizens.

And right now, I think three issues are especially rising in the conversation that probably would not have been brought up if it wasn't for an election.

What are you hearing from people? Where are they at as far as farmers go?

Everyone kind of figured that we weren't going to get this advanced out of committee last week.

Yeah, that's right.

Once Democrats made their opening statement, we kind of knew it was going to be a tied vote, which ended up being a failed vote because Tuberville didn't show up to vote in the committee.

And we knew this was going to be another month of uncertainty.

You know, from the time the markup was released to the time, sorry, the time we had the discussion draft released to the markup was debated.

It was internal silence on Capitol Hill, kept asking Republicans and Democrats, how are we feeling about these snap error rates? And clearly there was no negotiations actually happening because only a couple of days before were some concessions offered by Republicans.

Democrats didn't take them.

Talk about that piece of this Senate Farm Bill puzzle, Jake.