• If you are having problems logging in please use the Contact Us in the lower right hand corner of the forum page for assistance.

Fram Bill Extended One Week

Mike

Well-known member
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

House seeks one-week farm bill extension



(4/16/2008)
Sally Schuff

The House of Representatives is set to act this morning on a one-week extension of the 2002 Farm Bill. The extension was placed on the House "suspension" calendar this morning. The 2002 Farm Bill officially expires on Friday and House ag committee leaders agree that the House-Senate conference negotiators cannot produce a final product but that time. Additionally the House is not expected to be in session on Friday. Negotiators from the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee were unable to reach an agreement Tuesday afternoon on budget savings to pay for $10 billion in farm bill spending. Yesterday, House and Senate conferees adopted the new farm bill's credit, research and trade titles, but a few issues remain to be resolved on the trade portion. The conference resumes this afternoon at 1:30 p.m. EDT.
 

PORKER

Well-known member
Farm bill may be on President's desk by May 9th
Wednesday, April 16, 2008, 10:19 AM

by Peter Shinn


The House of Representatives Wednesday morning by a voice vote approved a one-week extension of the 2002 farm bill through April 25th. The Senate is also expected approve a one-week of the 2002 farm bill before it expires Friday. The extension comes as the next farm bill continues to be hung-up in Congress on funding and jurisdictional issues.

But House Ag Committee Chairman Collin Peterson told his colleagues he believes those will be resolved within the next week. Still, Peterson warned it's unlikely a new farm bill will actually get to the President's desk by then.

"We fully expect to have these things wrapped up by the 25th, in terms of having the policy differences on the Ag Committee and the funding differences resolved," Peterson said. "But everybody needs to understand that after that, we're going to need an additional extension probably of two weeks, in order - this is a very complex, huge bill that's going to take us time to pull together, to enroll, to get passed through the House and the Senate, get to the President in time for him to read it before he signs it," he added. "So people can expect that we're going to have to have another couple extra weeks after next Friday, provided we get everything resolved which I expect we will."

If Peterson's timeline holds true, that means President Bush may be signing the 2008 farm bill into law on or about May 9th. In the meantime, the House-Senate Farm Bill Conference Committee is expected to meet on an almost daily basis to iron out the outstanding ag policy issues between the House and Senate versions of the farm bill.
 

PORKER

Well-known member
Bush threatens Congress by blocking Extension

Washington, D.C. — The Bush administration is threatening to block an extension of the farm bill unless lawmakers meet its demands for changes in policy and avoids raising revenue to increase spending.

Existing programs are scheduled to expire Friday.

The House approved a one-week extension this morning, but Agriculture Department spokesman Keith Williams said President Bush won't agree to it unless Congress shows progress in writing a farm bill he can support.

"It is up to the farm bill negotiators to demonstrate that progress is being made on legislation that provides real reform while using acceptable offsets to pay for any additional spending," Williams said.

The White House has refused to go along with any revenue-raising provisions that it considers a tax increase and also is demanding that Congress tighten eligibility rules for crop subsidies.
"It seems every time Congress advances this farm bill, the White House has to throw up another obstacle to the bill's completion," said Sen. Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who chairs the House-Senate conference committee that is writing a final version of the farm bill.

"It's like we've pulled up in the combine for harvest, only to see a big boulder in the middle of the field setting us back."
 

PORKER

Well-known member
Extension in doubt as farm bill still stumbling



(4/16/2008)
Sally Schuff Feed /Stuffs Mag

The new farm bill faces growing jeopardy as Administration officials said today not enough progress has been made to recommend even a one-week extension. The 2002 farm bill expires Friday. The House passed a one-week extension this morning, and Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin said he hoped Senate leadership would follow suit tonight (April 16). But, when asked what it would take to get the President's signature on the extension, Agriculture Deputy Secretary Chuck Conner said the there was not enough "substantial progress" to recommend the President sign the legislation.
 

PORKER

Well-known member
The White House says if Congress cannot agree on a new farm law by Friday, it should extend the outmoded 2002 law for at least one year. The No. 2 Agriculture Department official says there could be a veto of the new law if it raises taxes.
 

PORKER

Well-known member
Senate Extends Farm Bill
Jason Vance [email protected]
April 17, 2008


The Senate passed an extension of the 2002 Farm Bill Thursday morning. The one-week extension, which expires next Friday, April 25, was passed by unanimous consent. The House of Representatives passed the extension yesterday. It now goes to the President for his signature, but there is some uncertainty as to whether he will sign it or not.

Any BETS???????????Ya or Nay
 

PORKER

Well-known member
With the farm bill expiring at midnight Friday, Congress now faces a potential calamity. Lawmakers need either a deal or an extension by then, but administration officials warned yesterday that Bush won't sign an extension unless the White House concludes negotiators are making "substantial progress" in settling their differences. "At this point we have not seen that," said Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Charles Conner.

Without action by Friday, farm programs would default to what they were in 1949. The U.S. government would be required to support milk prices at $28.20 per 100 pounds, well above current prices. But soybean growers would get no support at all.

It's uncertain who will blink. If the White House refuses to sign an extension, then the administration will take the blame in farm country for pushing U.S. agriculture into chaos, asserted one senior House aide. On the other hand, there is growing pressure on the Senate to back down.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), who chairs the House panel that writes annual spending bills for agriculture, on Tuesday denounced a Senate proposal to fund tax breaks and other farm spending by utilizing savings from the Medicare program previously earmarked for mental health.

"To take that money and apply it to race horses, frankly I don't think those are our priorities," she said
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
I watched the Senate committee hearings last night on the $108 BILLION Supplemental Budget for Iraq- and after watching the BILLIONS that is being asked to be added onto the budget for building Iraqs infrastucture (schools, bridges, roads, hospitals, oil wells)- while the Iraqi government have only budgeted a fraction ($12 Billion last year, much of which they didn't use, prefering US taxpayer dollars :roll: -$15 Billion this year with only $50 Billion for an entire budget this year)- and they have BILLIONS $ of oil money stuck in banks around the world ($200 Billion in US banks alone) makes you wonder who our government/Administration is really working for :???: :shock: :roll: :( :( :mad:
 

PORKER

Well-known member
Bush Under Pressure To Sign One-Year Farm Bill Extension
Fri. Apr. 18, 2008

Farm bill conferees exchanged offers and counteroffers late Thursday as President Bush considered whether to sign a one-week extension of the 2002 farm bill Congress sent him Thursday.

Bush is under pressure to sign the one-week extension even though he has said that if Congress did not finish the new bill by today, he would favor a one-year or longer extension.Because of both chambers’ limited schedule today, if Bush does not sign the extension, antiquated permanent laws from the 1930s and 1940s will go into effect.

Some of the permanent laws would not go into effect immediately because sections of the 2002 bill expire on planting dates, but dairy provisions might cause an increase in milk prices. Administration officials have said that a comment period would delay the impact of permanent law.

A senior Senate Democratic aide said that even if permanent laws do not go into effect immediately, farmers are likely to hold Bush responsible.

One farm leader said that if wheat farmers were to find that their bankers will refuse to give them loans because the farm program is not clear, they will blame the Bush administration for being unwilling to sign a one-week extension. Bush’s advisers should recommend a veto only “if they want to put a ‘kick me’ sign on their backs,” the farm leader said.

Senate Agriculture Chairman Tom Harkin canceled a farm bill conference Thursday, but other meetings took place.

Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad and House Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson said the Senate Finance and the House Ways and Means committees agreed to use increased government income from stricter stock basis reporting as the major offset for about $6 billion of the $10 billion increase in farm bill spending over 10 years.

Conrad maintained the rest of the $10 billion should come from customs user fees, which CBO and OMB classify as negative outlays rather than tax increases. Conrad and Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus said conferees have presented House Speaker Pelosi with a proposal to handle the tax package attached to the farm bill by increasing tax breaks only by the amounts of tax reforms through other provisions in the same package.

Conrad said provisions that would limit net operating losses and ethanol subsidies would be used to pay for conservation and alternative energy tax breaks.

A Baucus aide said that other farm tax reforms would be used to come up with a package of $2.4 billion that would be used to fund an equal amount of tax breaks.

To sweeten the farm bill for the House, the Senate offered to increase spending on nutrition by $500 million to bring the total nutrition increase to $10 billion.

The Senate also offered to decrease disaster assistance from $4 billion to $3.8 billion and to decrease direct payments to farmers by $250 million.

But the House rejected the Senate offer on the financing and the tax package. Peterson and House Agriculture ranking member Bob Goodlatte said House conferees became worried that some of the tax breaks in the Senate package were only short term. Peterson said the Senate package would create a new group of tax extender issues.

A Baucus aide said that Baucus told conferees that tax bills often include short-term measures and that he is planning a major tax reform bill for 2009 and 2010.

The House offered, with Pelosi’s approval, to include $1 billion in tax breaks and to raise money through farm bill cuts and tax compliance measures to increase the total spending by $9.5 billion.

Negotiators said more meetings and a possible formal conference are planned for today, but House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel said he does not plan to participate in meetings today. “We are closer, but there are so many different directions for how we are closer,” Rangel said.

by Jerry Hagstrom

Fri. Apr. 18, 2008
 

Kato

Well-known member
Farmscape for April 18, 2008 (Episode 2819)



The Minnesota Pork Producers Association says delayed passage of the 2008 U.S. Farm Bill is creating uncertainty as pork producers prepare for Country of Origin Labelling.

With Mandatory U.S. Country of Origin Labelling set to take effect September 30, pork producers had hoped an April 18 deadline for passage of the 2008 Farm Bill would give them an idea of what will be required under the new rules.

With the House of Representatives and the Senate deadlocked over a range of spending issues, the House has extended the current Farm Bill by one week to allow continued discussion.

Because of uncertainty over whether U.S. packers will accept Canadian sourced pigs when COOL becomes mandatory several American producers have stopped accepting Canadian weanlings.

Minnesota Pork Producers executive Director Dave Preisler admits no one knows how this will turn out.



Clip-Dave Preisler-Minnesota Pork Producers Association

There's been a number of discussions with packers and producers and retailers and there has been a middle ground that has been negotiated.

Obviously we don't want to go backward on that middle ground.

There are some groups out there that don't even like that middle ground and so part of it we're struggling to just maintain that middle ground that has been negotiated over the last several months and we'll see where it brings us from there.

Ideally again, we're not a fan of Country of Origin Labelling but there are larger political barriers that have come to bear here that have made it difficult to fight.

It has nothing to do necessarily to do with pork but has other things to do with, for example beef and also some of the trade problems with imports that came from China.

It just created a very negative tone in Washington, D.C. towards imports.

We don't believe there's anything wrong with imported Canadian pigs but it gets caught up in a larger firestorm.



Preisler says the politics in Washington have made the situation difficult and U.S. producers don't like it any more than Canadian producers do.
 

Kato

Well-known member
Bush signs one-week extension of farm law as House and Senate argue over program's future
Associated Press

Last update: April 18, 2008 - 1:49 PM

WASHINGTON - President Bush on Friday signed a one-week extension of current farm law as the House and Senate continued to argue over how to pay for a multibillion-dollar farm bill.

The measure, passed by the House on Wednesday and the Senate on Thursday, will keep the farm program going until April 25.

Bush has threatened to veto the House and Senate farm bills, which would cost roughly $280 billion over five years to expand agriculture and nutrition programs. He says they are too expensive and would not sufficiently cut subsidy payments to wealthy farmers in a time of robust farm prices.

Deputy Agriculture Secretary Charles Conner had said on Wednesday that Bush would only sign the extension if it appeared negotiators had made significant progress on the bill, and he said the administration had not yet seen that progress.

Negotiations are in disarray as lawmakers from the House and Senate squabble over how to pay for the legislation.
 

PORKER

Well-known member
Farm bill conferees move closer privately, bicker publicly
Friday, April 18, 2008, 3:32 PM

by Peter Shinn

President Bush signed another one-week extension of the 2002 farm bill today as negotiations on a new farm bill continued in Congress. While the House and Senate have made and exchanged offers and counter-offers over the last few days, there's still no solid agreement on exactly how much the farm bill will spend, how it will be paid for or whether or not it will include substantial ag-related tax cuts. All of those questions have to be decided by members of the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees.

In closed-door meetings Thursday, House farm bill conferees offered to spend $9.5 billion over the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) baseline for farm programs. Of that total, $6 billion represents an earlier offer from the House, $2 billion would be earmarked for a permanent ag disaster aid program, $500 million would go toward nutrition and $1 billion would go to ag-related tax provisions. And during a public meeting of the House-Senate Farm Bill Conference Committee meeting Friday, House Ag Committee Chairman Collin Peterson told Senate Ag Committee Tom Harkin the new House proposal represented a major shift toward the Senate's farm bill proposal.

"I think you should view that as significant progress," Peterson said. "We are much, much closer than where we were."

And during Friday's meeting, the Senate made a counter-offer that continued to call for $10 billion in spending over the CBO budget baseline and reduced the size of its proposed ag-related tax package from $2.5 billion to just over $2.4 billion. But the Senate's tax proposals remain extremely contentious. One key point brought forward by ranking Peterson is that many House members believe the Senate's tax proposals will actually cost much more than projected. That's because several of the tax provisions are scheduled to sunset sooner than many think they actually will.
"So that seems to be some of the dispute that's going on between our Ways and Means people and your Finance people, that they view this as adding a whole bunch of extenders to the mix, of things that, in anybody that's realistic realizes, once that this is started, it's not going to be terminated after one year," Peterson explained. "So they, along with, I think, the Speaker, were willing to consider a billion dollars of tax cuts that were paid for over 10 years, but what was put on the table was actually $10 billion."

Ranking House Ag Committee Republican Bob Goodlatte went even further. He suggested the Senate's approach of quickly sunsetting most of its ag-related tax provisions had left a sour taste in the mouths of the House leadership and tax writers alike.

"The fact of the matter is, in that one regard, we definitely - if we didn't move further apart, we definitely moved further apart in the minds of some of the people who have got to provide the money to us," Goodlatte said.

A number of Senators strenuously objected to the idea that their ag tax package would cost more than advertised. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, for example, complained that the objections of House members ignored the fact that the cost of the ag-tax provisions had been scored by the Joint Tax Committee and CBO.

"We can't be making up our own rules here," Conrad said. "We can't be having somebody say, 'Well, it really costs $8 billion because these things are going to be extended,'" he added. "You know, we sunset things here all of the time."

Conrad also noted the proposed $2.4 billion tax package proposed by the Senate would be fully offset by changes "from within agriculture." But Goodlatte and Peterson both pointed out the lawmakers who could address tax and spending issues, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, were not present. There was also back-and-forth about how the Senate's proposal for increased user fees should be scored, and the meeting ultimately devolved into a series of arguments between lawmakers about unrelated issues.

At the conclusion of the roughly 90 minute meeting, Peterson lamented that the House and Senate Agriculture Committees should never have asked for any extra money over the CBO baseline for farm programs. If they hadn't, the farm bill would have remained under the control of the respective Agriculture Committees.

"Knowing what we know now, it's almost unanimous over here that we would not have gone down this path," Peterson said. "We would have written a bill within our jurisdiction. That was a mistake."

Senate Ag Committee Chairman Tom Harkin suggested farm bill conferees should meet again Monday afternoon, but Peterson said there would be little point if progress on the farm bill tax and funding issues isn't made over the weekend. He and Harkin agreed to reconvene the Farm Bill Conference Committee Tuesday morning. And Harkin warned that he would start forcing votes on the questions under his jurisdiction at that point.

"I want to make it very clear that if this isn't done by Tuesday, and I mean an agreement by Tuesday, then I will start putting to votes here," Harkin said. "I will start asking for votes on certain proposals from this side."

But it's not clear what that will accomplish, since the primary areas of disagreement between the House and Senate involve tax and spending issues that aren't under the jurisdiction of the Ag Committees. Either way, it now seems clear another short-term farm bill extension is unlikely unless a solid deal on those points is finally consummated.
 

PORKER

Well-known member
Close, but no cigar, on farm bill funding yet
Wednesday, April 23, 2008, 11:04 AM

by Peter Shinn

Another House-Senate Farm Bill Conference Committee meeting took place yesterday, and it yielded much the same results as all the others so far. Many had hoped lawmakers would announce an agreement on the funding issues that have stymied progress on the pending farm legislation. But they were disappointed.

Instead, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin read a statement from President Bush that urged Congress to pass a one-year extension of the current farm bill. While not specifically saying so, the President's statement suggested he won’t sign another short-term extension when the current one expires at the end of this week.

"He's called on us to extend it for one year," Harkin said. "I know there are some who feel that that might be the best thing to do," he added. "Maybe that's where we wind up - I don't know."

If there is going to be a new farm bill this year, tax writers with the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees will have to reach agreement on how to fund it. And Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana said negotiators are almost there.

"We're getting there," Baucus assured his colleagues. "We're getting close."

Such optimism was bi-partisan, at least among senators. Ranking Senate Finance Committee Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa had this upbeat assessment of prospects for a compromise with his House counterparts.

"I feel good about it," Grassley said.

But the ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee Jim McCrery of Louisiana was nearly as sanguine as Grassley and Baucus. He said, while House Republicans won’t necessarily back President Bush’s farm bill position, they still can’t support just any deal.

"I and [House Minority] Leader [John] Boehner have tried very hard to create our own parameters in this discussion and not just hue to the White House line," McCrery explained. "But we do have a limit."

The bottom line appears to be that Congress may have little choice but to pass a one-year farm bill extension if a wide-ranging agreement on funding for a new farm bill isn’t done in the next 24 hours. On the other hand, some progress has been made. Conferees yesterday did approve most elements of the crop insurance, commodity exchange and specialty crops titles of the next farm bill.
 

PORKER

Well-known member
U.S. Sen. Harkin: Short-term farm bill extension will pave the way to a new bill
4/24/2008

Contact: Kate Cyrul / Jennifer Mullin
202-224-3254

Conference Chairman Urges President’s Signature

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry and the Senate-House conference committee on the farm bill, today announced that the Senate has passed a short-term extension of the farm bill, extending current law until May 2, 2008.

“The conferees have agreed on a majority of the provisions in this bill. One area where there is broad agreement is on the fact that we do not want a one-year extension of current law. We want to finish up the good bill that we have before us.

“To do that we need another short-term extension to allow the work to get completed, including the working out of the offsets and taxes issues. I urge the President not just to sign that extension, but to begin to show constructive leadership in helping us to get this bill done.”

ALSO !!!!!

House, Senate pass one-week farm bill extension
By MARY CLARE JALONICK – 56 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress passed a one-week extension of current farm law Thursday, defying President Bush by trying to find agreement on a new bill.

As negotiations on a farm bill have stumbled, Bush has asked the House and Senate to extend the law for a year or longer. He says the new legislation is too expensive and would not do enough to cut subsidy payments to wealthy farmers in a time of record crop prices.

Farm legislation passed by the House and Senate last year would cost roughly $280 billion over five years, with around two-thirds of the cost going to food stamps and other nutrition programs. Negotiators have been arguing for months over how to pay for the bill and have still not agreed.

The one-week extension passed by voice vote in the House and Senate.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said farm-state lawmakers are "very close" to a deal on the bill but will not be able to finish all of the paperwork by May 2, when current law would expire under the new extension.

Harkin originally asked for a two-week extension but Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, objected, saying lawmakers have taken too long to write the legislation.

Congress has now extended the law two times in as many weeks. This would be the fifth extension since the law originally expired in September.

In a statement Tuesday, Bush called for a one-year extension and said proposals being discussed by negotiators would "would fail several important tests that I have set forth."
 

PORKER

Well-known member
BUT

washingtonpost.com > Print Edition > Editorial Pages
Pork Gridlock
Better to kill the farm bill than allow the wasteful subsidies senators are seeking.


Who's Blogging» Links to this article
Thursday, April 24, 2008; Page A20

FOR ALMOST A YEAR NOW, Congress has been debating a five-year farm bill costing upward of $280 billion, to replace the one that expired in October. The business of showering federal money on farmers has always been a little grotesque. Lately, it is becoming downright dysfunctional. The House-Senate conference committee is at an impasse over how to fund billions of dollars in new spending. Unless the president signs yet another one-week extension, current farm law will expire tomorrow. For legal reasons, federal farm policy would revert to the rules laid down in 1938 and 1949 agriculture statutes, throwing crop support programs into chaos and -- more alarming -- possibly eliminating authority to provide new international food aid.

Congress has reached this point mainly because farm-state senators insisted on larding the legislation with even more costly subsidies than the House provided. In particular, Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) have rolled out $2.5 billion worth of tax breaks for biofuels, wind energy and thoroughbred racehorses. Mr. Baucus and fellow Democrat Kent Conrad of North Dakota are determined to create what they call a permanent disaster relief fund, priced at about $4 billion over the next five years. Ostensibly, the idea is to set up a safety net for farmers beset by bad weather. In reality, the program is a subsidy for those who grow crops or raise livestock on perennially dry, environmentally fragile, land -- much of it in Montana and the Dakotas.

Neither the Senate nor the House put any meaningful means test on direct payments to farmers, so these wasteful handouts are slated to run at least $5 billion per year. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has resisted the Senate's spending and tax excesses, telling her colleagues from that body that she won't countenance cuts in food stamps to pay for them. On this, she is in rare agreement with President Bush, who charged on Tuesday that the conferees are contemplating no less than $16 billion in spending increases "masked in part by budgetary gimmicks and funded in part by additional tax revenues."

The president correctly announced that, with record farm income, now is not the time for Congress to ask other sectors of the economy to pay higher taxes in order to increase the size of government." Given their inability so far to find a mutually acceptable way to pay for the Senate's extra goodies, the president told the conferees to send him a one-year extension of existing law -- and let a new Congress and administration revisit the matter in 2009. We hope that the president's admonition is enough to bring the conference to a reasonable conclusion; a new farm bill is the only way to get much-needed increases in nutrition and conservation, but if the effort fails, no bill might be better than a truly awful one.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080424/BUSINESS01/80424018/1029/business
 

PORKER

Well-known member
US Congress Negotiators Reach Tentative Farm Bill Deal
5:55 PM, April 25, 2008

(Updates with details on conservation funding, nutrition)


WASHINGTON (AP)--U.S. congressional negotiators reached a tentative agreement
Friday on a multibillion-dollar farm bill that includes a hefty increase for
nutrition programs at a time of rising food prices.

An intense series of closed-door bargaining sessions over how to pay for the
five-year, roughly $280 billion bill ended Friday afternoon with senior
Democrats expressing optimism that they would soon be sending the measure to
President Bush.

"I don't think there's any question now that we can get this done by the
eighth of May," said Rep. Collin C. Peterson, the Minnesota Democrat who heads
the Agriculture Committee.

A key breakthrough came when senior lawmakers, after an hours-long huddle in
an ornate room in the Capitol, agreed on a $1.7 billion package of tax breaks
to be included in the bill, and on how to finance the overall package.

The outline includes an $861 million increase for nutrition programs,
partially paid for by slashing crop subsidies by $400 million and cutting a
program to pay farmers for ruined crops by $250 million.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said the shift was "urgently needed because of the
run-up in food costs and food prices."

It also reflected the political and economic realities surrounding this
year's tough farm bill talks. With crop prices high and the federal budget
squeezed, there's less appetite in Washington for big farm programs, especially
among congressional leaders who hail from urban areas. The sharp economic slump
has many lawmakers focused more on job losses and home foreclosures than farm
policy.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Rep. Charles B. Rangel, D-N.Y., the
Ways and Means Committee chairman, pushed hard for the nutrition boosts.

"A lot of painful reductions (had) to be made in order to shift resources to
places that are being hard hit by this weakening economy," Conrad said.

With the increases, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, the Agriculture Committee
chairman, said two-thirds of farm bill resources would go to nutrition.

"We carried a heavy load for nutrition," Harkin said. "It's not just a farm
bill. This is a farm and a food and an energy bill."

To close stubborn funding gaps, negotiators agreed to cut an ethanol tax
credit that has previously been seen as untouchable because of its popularity
in politically potent Iowa. They sliced $1 billion in support for blending fuel
with the corn-based additive, bringing the per-gallon credit from 51 cents to
45 cents.

They boosted support for another form of the clean-burning fuel additive -
cellulosic ethanol, which is made from plant matter - by $400 million.

The measure increases funding for conservation programs, including a
first-ever infusion of federal farm dollars - $372 million - to clean up the
Chesapeake Bay.

"This is a very good day for Chesapeake Bay cleanup efforts," Rep. Chris Van
Hollen, D-Md., said.

The marathon round of negotiations was punctuated by several near-collapses
and flare-ups between senior Democrats and Republicans struggling to reach a
deal amid intense pressure from farm groups jealously guarding their subsidies.

"We took a little bit out of here and there and made it work but it's tough -
nobody wants to give anything up," Peterson said.

The tentative deal includes a $3.8 billion disaster package, trimmed from the
$4 billion farm-state lawmakers had initially sought.

"It's just a trim ... just a nick, we feel," said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.,
"The program is there, and that's the important thing."

The tax package includes several elements sought by powerful lawmakers,
including a tax break for race horse owners important to Sen. Mitch McConnell,
R-Ky., the minority leader, and one that benefits timber companies championed
by Baucus. Also included were trade preferences for Caribbean countries, a
priority for Rangel, whose district has a high concentration of people of
Caribbean descent.

Negotiators were still working to finalize provisions limiting farm subsidies
for the wealthy. Under the tentative deal, the government would eventually
limit payments to high-earning "nonfarmers," people who make only a small
portion of their income from farming. But it wouldn't impose any income limits
on wealthy farmers, Peterson said.

The Bush administration has called for much tougher limits that would apply
to anyone who earned more than an average of $200,000 annually.

Advocates of more sweeping farm policy changes said the measure still
wouldn't go far enough to scale back subsidies. Rev. David Beckmann of the
nutrition group Bread for the World characterized the deal as a "half victory
... more help for hungry people, but no significant reform yet in the subsidy
programs."

A final agreement on the massive measure will likely come next week, after
staff aides spend the weekend hashing out key details. Senior Republicans and
Democrats still must vet the deal with rank-and-file lawmakers.

They are racing to complete the measure before the current farm law runs out.
Hours before the deal, Bush signed a one-week extension that expires May 2.
 

PORKER

Well-known member
White House Signals Farm Bill Veto
By Ryan Grim

Apr 28, 2008
9:32 pm
(The Politico) White House spokesman Scott Stanzel today threatened that President Bush would veto the Farm Bill if it comes to him in its current iteration.
"I understand members will be meeting about this tomorrow, so things still may be a bit fluid. But, as it stands now, it is not something the president would support," Stanzel said in an e-mail when asked if the president would veto it.

"More than a year ago, the administration put forward a reform-minded farm bill that met our priorities and made wise use of the people's money. In February, the president said he wanted to sign a good farm bill, but would veto legislation that didn't make needed reforms," Stanzel wrote.

"The farm bill proposal currently being discussed by conferees lacks important reforms the president has repeatedly called for. With farm incomes at an all time high, Congress shouldn't be asking taxpayers to pay for even more government subsidies for farmers. The proposal before Congress would dramatically increase spending, in part by masking additional spending in budgetary gimmicks and accounting tricks. Now is the time to modernize our agricultural policies for the future, but Members of Congress have not risen to this challenge."
 
Top