News Coverage
House, Senate Craft $300 Billion Farm Bill Over Veto Threat
Published May 8, 2008
The House and Senate may be getting ready to do what has been nearly impossible - overriding President Bush's threatened veto of the $300 billion farm bill.
House and Senate negotiators reached agreement Thursday on the legislation that spells out federal crop subsidies, nutrition programs and even renewable energy efforts for the next five years.
President Bush warned that it was still too costly, but both Democrats and Republicans crafted the farm legislation in negotiations.
"The president has indicated he still does not like the legislation but I believe there are enough votes to override his veto," Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., and a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said Thursday. "We have labored mightily to finish this bill and, if the president vetoes it, that would be a slap in the face to farmers."
Salazar ticked off items in the bill important to Colorado - a $3.8 billion disaster assistance program that would help with crop and livestock losses from blizzards and other disasters; $1 billion in additional money to encourage renewable fuels; and a requirement that all foods carry labels saying their country of origin. Also, the bill would prevent the Department of Agriculture from closing Farm Service Offices in a list of Colorado counties, including El Paso and Larimer. The sticking point has been the government's direct payments program to farmers. Farmers and landowners can qualify for federal crop payments as long as they earn less than $2.5 million a year. The Bush administration wanted that income cap slashed severely, down to $200,000, a reform it didn't insist on when the Republican-controlled Congress established the income ceiling in the 2002 Farm Bill. Salazar said the new version of the legislation sets the income limit at $500,000 for landowners who are not farmers, and $750,000 per individual for farmers, meaning that a married couple still could qualify with a maximum income of $1.5 million.
Other major features of the bill are:
It includes a $10 billion increase in the federal food nutrition programs, such as food stamps.
It would provide an extra $4 billion for land conservation programs, which pay farmers not to plant acreage.
It would shrink the per-gallon tax credit for producing ethanol to 45 cents from 51 cents in order to encourage the production of non-corn based fuels.
The direct payment program, which pays farmers and landowners for crops that have been grown historically on a farm, has been a chronic lightning rod for lawmakers who claim that billions are wasted in subsidies to wealthy farmers. The Environmental Working Group, a public-policy research organization that tracks farm payments, claims that 60 percent of the federal subsidy program goes to 10 percent of the nation's growers.
But the coalition of farm state lawmakers crosses party lines and it is that group that has the votes to override a Bush veto, as lawmakers did last year in approving a list of national federal water projects, despite opposition from the White House.
