About 1,300 union workers have been locked out of their jobs by American Crystal Sugar since Aug. 1. Since the lockout started, the union and company have only met twice, both times at the urging of a federal mediator. Following the rejection of Monday’s offer, there are no plans to meet again.

Sen. Al Franken said “it’s imperative that both sides continue to work to come to an agreement that will end this lockout and get workers back on the job,” pointing out that all sides play a role in the sugar industry’s success.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Rep. Collin Peterson released a joint statement highlighting the impact of the lockout on communities across the Red River Valley: “We continue to urge both Crystal Sugar management and workers to come together at the negotiating table to work out an agreement that allows workers to return to their jobs as soon as possible. American Crystal and these jobs are very important to the region.”

Locked out workers in Minnesota are receiving unemployment benefits, but those who live in North Dakota are denied them under state law. Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota said in a statement that the “lock-out is taking a serious toll on families in North Dakota and Minnesota and the economic and social impact can be felt up and down the Red River Valley.”

In an interview with the Grand Forks Herald, Conrad admitted that the dispute could harm the chances of a farm bill. Franken has warned in the past that American Crystal Sugar’s tactics of locking out workers could alienate pro-worker members of Congress who have previously supported protections for the sugar industry.

Conrad told the Grand Forks Herald that the “company needs to think long and hard about the consequences, about the implications of their strategy.”

The current $284 billion Farm Bill, which was approved in 2008, expires on Sept. 30, 2012. Around $210 billion goes to programs like food stamps and school lunches, while slightly more than $70 billion subsidizes commodity crops and funds agricultural research, rural development and energy.

The Farm Bill, which is rewritten every five years, is always a hot topic, but this year, it might be on a tighter schedule than normal. Fears that the congressional “Super Committee,” which is tasked with cutting more than $1 trillion from the federal budget over the next 10 years, might make drastic cuts to agriculture programs have spurred agricultural interests to take matters into their own hands.

As reported by our sister site, The Minnesota Independent, a letter signed by Agricultural Committee members Frank Lucas R-Okla., Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., Collin Peterson, D-Minn., and Pat Roberts, R-Kan., proposes making $23 billion in cuts to agriculture. The committee hope to propose the cuts in detail by Nov. 1, in order to safeguard agriculture from further cuts brought on by the “Super Committee.”

One of the industries most affected by Farm Bill legislation is Big Sugar, which lines the campaign coffers of lawmakers across the country in an effort to shore up support for sugar subsidies.

According to AgWeek, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., recently spoke to the the American Sugar Alliance via video teleconference and offered an assurance that the debt cieling-reduction bill wouldn’t cut farm subsidies in the short term. If the “Super Committee” doesn’t come up with a deficit reduction proposal by December, however,  farm programs will be affected.

Via AgWeek:

“Agriculture spending is not included in the first stage, but if there is a sequestration agriculture would be included because those cuts would be across the board,” Conrad said.

Conrad also told the cane and beet growers that the sequestration would not have a direct effect on the sugar program because the sugar program is operated on a no net cost basis to the government, but that if other farm programs have to take cuts there will be pressure to change the sugar program as a matter of fairness.

People “argue that sugar should take a hit even though it is a no cost program,” Conrad said.

In the past, during tough budget times Congress imposed a fee on sugar growers to run their program.

Conrad said he does not know whether the deficit reduction process under the joint committee will include writing the new farm bill this fall rather than waiting until 2012. Conrad said that it is more likely that the bill will be written in 2012, but added, “I personally do not believe we are advantaged by waiting.”

But while Big Sugar’s lobbying arm is extensive (continual campaign donations are made to both Republicans and Democrats) and powerful, not everyone is on their side. In fact, two House Republicans — Rep. Joseph Pitts, R-Pa., and Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill. —are actively seeking to reform sugar policy with their bill, the Free Market Sugar Act (H.R. 1385), which would repeal the sugar price support program.

“The Super Committee should not perpetuate this egregious subsidy, which costs consumers billions of dollars each year,” wrote the two in a recent blog post published by The Hill. “Sugar policy should be thoroughly reformed in the next Farm Bill in order to protect consumers, small businesses, and workers in sugar-using industries nationwide, not by the Super Committee.”

In addition to Udall, 15 other senators–including Michael Bennet–signed the letter.

In addition to Udall and Bennet, the letter was signed by senators Tom Carper (DE), Kay Hagan (NC), Tim Johnson (SD), Mark Begich (AK), Jon Tester (MT), Mark Warner (VA), Ben Nelson (NE), Kent Conrad (ND), Jim Webb (VA), Amy Klobuchar (MN), Mary Landrieu (LA), Claire McCaskill (MO), Bob Casey (PA), and Chris Coons (DE).

“Knowing that a bipartisan deal is within reach to cut tens of billions of dollars from current funding levels, it would be irresponsible to shut down the government and punish our constituents solely to assert a political point,” the senators wrote. “We stand ready to resolve this short-term funding debate in a common-sense way and work with you on tackling the even more daunting fiscal challenges our country must confront. The American people expect no less.”

The full letter follows:

Dear Speaker Boehner,

We recognize the difficult task you face in seeking a budget compromise for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2011. While we all agree that Congress must address our long-term structural deficits, we also share a responsibility to govern, support the economy and provide critical services for the American people.

Although we have had 13 straight months of private-sector job growth and added 1.8 million such jobs in that time, the U.S. economy is still fragile and too many Americans continue to struggle. The federal government and Congress should be single-mindedly focused on supporting economic development and job growth. But some members within your caucus continue to seek sustained confrontation and are interested in shutting down the government as a misguided sign that they are serious about debt reduction.

However, a government shutdown at this time will only serve as a counterproductive attack on our economic recovery. Economists note that a suspension of services would have a measurably detrimental impact on our economic output, while business leaders warn about a shutdown’s impact on confidence in the U.S. economic recovery. A setback of this nature would prevent the growth we need to tangibly address our long-term fiscal imbalances. Knowing that a bipartisan deal is within reach to cut tens of billions of dollars from current funding levels, it would be irresponsible to shut down the government and punish our constituents solely to assert a political point.

We know you understand the importance of this issue and share our desire to avoid shocks to our fragile economy that would inhibit job growth and hurt our fellow citizens. We stand ready to resolve this short-term funding debate in a common-sense way and work with you on tackling the even more daunting fiscal challenges our country must confront. The American people expect no less.

Conrad had been open about his ambivalence about running for another term and those doubts almost certainly increased following a 2010 election that decimated the Democratic party…

Outside interest groups — the conservative American Future Fund and liberal-aligned Commonsense Ten — have already run ads in North Dakota, suggesting that the race would be a major priority for both national parties.

His retirement is bad news for the Democrats — North and South Dakota has reliably voted Republican in presidential elections but elected Democrats to Congress until recently.

For the last eighteen years before the 2010 elections, North Dakota had two Democratic senators and one Democrat at the state’s lone seat in the House of Representatives — dubbed ‘Team North Dakota’ giving the small state more influence on committees (especially the House and Senate Agriculture Committees) than it would have had otherwise. Rep. Earl Pomeroy lost his seat in 2010 after airing a last-ditch ad featuring him showing his driver’s license and saying, “I’m not Nancy Pelosi, I’m not Barack Obama” U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan announced that he would not run for re-election in early 2010 after he faced the possibility of a serious challenge from popular Gov. John Hoeven (R).

South Dakota, too, elected Democrats like Sen. Tom Daschle, Rep. Stephanie Herseth and before them, Sen. George McGovern — all of whom were defeated in big Republican years of 2004, 2010 and 1980, respectively. Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) may well be the last Democrat of the Dakotas after 2012, as he is up for re-election in 2014. (He survived re-election in 2002 by 524 votes.)

The race might not be a foregone conclusion for Democrats as it was in 2010 — dthere isn’t a popular candidate like Gov. Hoeven in the race, and Barack Obama only lost North Dakota by eight points in 2008.

As they did during the health care debate, liberals will probably point out that the Dakotas have four senators, though the states’ cumulative population is only a little larger than that of the Bronx.

Dave Weigel notes that in 1889, congressional Republicans made the Dakotas two states to increase their representation in Congress. Belatedly, that could happen.

The Hill talked to Sens. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) and Mary Landrieu (D-La.), all of whom said they were still undecided. Landrieu, Dorgan and Conrad gave no indication of how they would vote on the DREAM Act, while McCaskill leaned more toward a “yes”:

“It depends on the language,” she said. “I have some problems with the way the bill was drafted last time. I am certainly more comfortable with the notion that somebody who has been in the country for five years and who came here through the fault of their parents and not their fault ought to get a green card to serve in the military. I’m very sympathetic to that. I’m just looking at the drafting now.”

But Pryor is leaning no.

“I’ll have to look at it and see, but my inclination is probably to vote against it again,” he said. “But I want to look at it and see. I know there’s been some changes.”

With Democrats undecided, the likelihood of the DREAM Act passing as an amendment remains up in the air. Reid will need 60 votes to pass the bill because several Republicans have vowed to block the DREAM Act, claiming it has nothing to do with defense spending. Previous Republican supporters of the DREAM Act, such as Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), have said they will vote against the bill.

Belying the expectations of some Democrats, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has indicated that the Senate will not punt on the issue of the  Bush tax cuts until after midterm elections and will instead debate the matter shortly after the August recess. It’s a clear sign that Reid and the Obama administration believe that a debate about letting the tax cuts expire can serve as a proxy for a larger debate about the policies of the Bush Administration — something they’d relish in the lead-up to midterms.

Obama has vowed to retain cuts for the middle-class — meaning individuals making less than $200,000 a year and families making less than $250,000. And Congress is now formally debating which cuts to allow to expire, given concern over the nation’s large annual deficit and massive national debt, and which cuts to keep.

Yesterday, the Senate Finance Committee started hearings on the matter, now the subject of serious debate among Democrats. The House is considering extending the middle-class cuts for a year before phase-out, and continuing the patch on the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) for two years. The Senate is considering similar provisions.

At the Finance Committee hearing, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said, “The big questions before us now are whether we should make some of these tax cuts permanent. And if so, which ones? But that’s not the only challenge. There’s another elephant in the room — the budget deficit. And, that elephant is growing. Last year, the budget deficit was the largest share of the economy since World War II.” He told lawmakers to note that “with today’s budget picture, it’s no longer clear that we can afford large tax cuts for the most well-to-do.”

Only around five million tax filers, out of more than 140 million working Americans, make enough to be hit by possible tax increases for next year.

Don’t hold your breath. Proving that their calls for bipartisanship are bunk, GOP leaders are already lashing out at the possibility that the commission would recommend that someone, somewhere pay higher taxes. “Americans know our problem is not that we tax too little, but that Washington spends too much,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said yesterday in a statement. (That’s the same Mitch McConnell who once called a deficit commission “the best way to address the [budget] crisis,” then voted against the proposal anyway.)

That’s also the message coming from the headliners at CPAC this week. Florida GOP Senate candidate Marco Rubio yesterday told the conservative faithful assembled in Washington that his plan for balancing the budget features an across-the-board tax cut, including an abolition of taxes on capital gains, dividends and interest.

“While we’re at it, let’s eliminate the one on death, too,” he said.

The implication from McConnell, Rubio and a host of others is that they can slash federal revenues and balance the budget by simply taking a hatchet to government programs. They must have forgotten what happened when the White House recently proposed to cut some spending in GOP Sen. Richard Shelby’s Alabama. Or the Republican outcry that accompanied the Democrats’ proposal to cut some payments to the private insurance plans operating under Medicare. Or the inconvenient fact that conservative states have historically received a good deal more federal funding than their residents have paid in federal taxes.

Into this picture, enter Alan Simpson, former GOP senator from Wyoming. Simpson — who, along with University of North Carolina President Erskine Bowles, will head Obama’s deficit commission — told PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff yesterday that those who think deficits can be controlled solely with spending cuts are, well, dazed and confused. From the transcript:

Woodruff: Some people, mainly Republicans right now, are arguing, what’s really needed are tax cuts, that, even if it raises the deficit in the short term, that this would get government out of the way of business, business could grow, and the deficit will take care of itself.

Simpson:  Well, I’m not smoking that same pipe. …

Everything is on the table.  But, if we’re just going to use flash words like cutting children’s benefits or cutting veterans or raising taxes, it will be a tougher struggle.

Everything is out there.  We [know] how people use emotion, fear, guilt, and racism.  I have been through that old stuff with immigration. … I don’t use those.  I use facts.  And we’re going to do a lot of facts.

Whether facts mean anything in an election year is another question altogether.

No matter. Today, during a Senate Budget Committee hearing, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) implied that the failure of the deficit task force bill was somehow Obama’s. Grilling Peter Orszag, the White House budget director, Alexander wondered what “problems” prevented the bill’s success the first time through.

You might want to consider a suggestion about bringing [the Conrad-Gregg proposal] up again, amending it, and finding out what the problems are. It had 16 Republican votes. If the president with 59 or 60 votes can’t pass something that’s important to him, it’s going to be a long four years.  So that’s a good start and maybe there are some adjustments that could be made in the statutory commission.

Or maybe there are some adjustments that could be made in the Republican strategy of blocking everything the White House supports, just for the opportunity to call the president ineffective.

But that was before (1) the Democrats decided to actually consider the bill, and (2) President Obama endorsed it. After those things happened, McConnell voted against the “best way” to rein in federal spending. Here’s Hiatt’s analysis:

It’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that the only thing that changed since May is the political usefulness of the proposal to McConnell’s partisan goals. He was happy to claim fiscal responsibility while beating up Obama for fiscal recklessness. But when Obama endorsed the idea, as he did on the Saturday before the vote — and when the commission actually, against all odds, had the wisp of a chance of winning the needed 60 Senate votes — McConnell bailed.

Worth noting: The vote on the Conrad-Gregg bill was not subject to the usual pressures of Washington. That is, it wasn’t really being lobbied by any industry, and it wasn’t inspiring the voter reaction of, say, health care reform. So why would Republicans kill a bill they’d endorsed? McConnell’s office sent Hiatt an elusive statement implying that the senator fears that the deficit panel would suggest tax hikes as part of its balanced-budget solution — which has only been a central element of the Conrad-Gregg proposal since its inception years ago.

“Our problems are not a result of taxing too little, but of spending too much,” McConnell said.

McConnell and the Republicans have, for the last year, said that their opposition to the Democrats’ agenda is rooted in the simple notion that they think their legislative preferences to be superior. McConnell’s flip-flop on the Conrad-Gregg bill communicates another reality altogether. It says that GOP leaders would rather see the nation fail than the Democrats win.