While at the John Deere 2014 product launch this week, Chuck spent some time with American Farm Bureau Federation Congressional Affairs specialist Mary Kay Thatcher, who was along for the ride.

At my request, he got an update from Mary Kay about what she expects Congress to do before the election, what Farm Bureau’s number one concern is right now, and the organization’s lawsuit against the EPA for privacy violations.

First of all, Mary Kay thinks immigration will be way back on the burner for Congress, considering they will only have about two weeks in session between now and election day. “Certainly we’re still focused on immigration and trying to do all we can to get it done, but the chances just aren’t very good,” she said. “We have got to do some appropriations bills, we have 12 of those to do, haven’t accomplished any of them, and the government will shut down October first…I’m just afraid the time is not there to deal with much else than appropriations.”

Farm Bureau and its members are mainly focused right now on getting comments into the EPA on the proposed Waters of the United States rule. “We’re concerned because we understand EPA may be taking some of the post card campaigns we have going and counting every post card as one, saying it’s one opinion expressed 853 times,” she said, adding that environmental interests favorable to the rule are claiming they have a million comments in. “So we have a lot of work to do to catch up.”

Last week, AFBF filed suit in federal court against the EPA over last year’s public release of personal information, charging that it violated “basic tenets of federal law” and Mary Kay says they want to make sure that never happens again. “We just filed the case, but at least we put a marker down,” she said.

Listen to Chuck’s interview with Mary Kay here: Interview with Mary Kay Thatcher, AFBF