Farm Bill Conference Starts Moving Toward An Endgame

Fri. May 2, 2008


House and Senate negotiators moved closer to the end of their long journey toward a final farm bill Thursday evening, as lawmakers resumed the conference in anticipation of a long night ahead.

Senate Agriculture Chairman Tom Harkin said he wanted to clear votes on all amendments, so when the conference meets next week it will only be to deal with any changes made necessary by new CBO scores and to hold a final vote on the elusive final conference report.

The chairman said he did not know whether President Bush would be willing to sign the bill but reiterated that his goal was to write as good a bill as he could and then send it to the president.

But Harkin said that at a meeting of principal negotiators Thursday afternoon, the negotiators made a decision to try to respond to some of the issues the Bush administration has raised about the bill that might draw a veto.

House Agriculture ranking member Bob Goodlatte and Senate Agriculture ranking member Saxby Chambliss met with Bush this week. Goodlatte and Chambliss both said they had an opportunity to present their view that the reforms in the bill were important, but said that Bush wanted to go further.

Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., said Thursday that while conferees would listen to the president, it is ultimately a legislative responsibility to write a bill. Pomeroy said that he believes there is a "decent chance" that both chambers of Congress would vote to override a veto, because there has been such widespread participation "both majority and minority" in writing the bill.

Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad said that Bush had expressed particular concern about the provision to extend the ethanol tariff for two years.

Conrad also said the negotiators had reopened the issues of the limit on direct payments and on adjusted gross income in an attempt to be responsive to Bush's concerns.

In an attempt to further tamp down the bill's price, Conrad said that the principal negotiators had decided to cut the mandatory spending for the McGovern-Dole international nutrition program from $840 million over 10 years to $60 million over 10 years. The program is named after former Sens. George McGovern, D-S.D., and Bob Dole, R-Kan.

The nonprofit group Friends of the World Food Program complained bitterly about the cut. Conrad said appropriators had made it clear that if the authorizers put that much money into the program, they would cut it.

The McGovern-Dole program currently operates on appropriated funds and would still be able to get more appropriated money in addition to the mandatory spending.

Earlier on Thursday, both the House and Senate cleared an extension of the farm bill that would last until May 16.

by Jerry Hagstrom

Fri. May 2, 2008

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