News Coverage
Farm Bill Sails Through Senate
Published May 15, 2008
A $307 billion Farm Bill cleared Congress Thursday by a lopsided 5-to-1 margin in the Senate, more than enough to overcome a threatened veto by President Bush.
Thirty-five Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) broke with Bush on the 81-15 roll call vote, which followed Wednesday’s House vote approving the same five-year bill 318-106.
The wide margins contrast with the months of often tortured negotiations over a massive bill that promises record funding for nutrition programs but has faced a steady drumbeat of criticism for its failure to impose tougher reforms on the current subsidy system.
New payment caps are imposed to bar the very wealthiest farmers and limit how much individuals can receive in annual direct payments from the government. But critics argue that these are token changes at a time when farmers could afford deeper spending cuts and taxpayers are facing higher food prices at the grocery store.
“In a period when crop prices and farm incomes are soaring to record levels, the continuation of bloated subsidies to the largest, most prosperous farms in the country can only be seen as a breathtaking cop-out on the part of congressional leaders,” said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based nonprofit.
Proponents argue that the reforms put in place will prove more significant than Cook allows, and once income caps are imposed, future Congresses will be better positioned to tighten the payment limits as needed in budget bills.
A stricter $40,000-per-year payment cap promises to reduce how much larger farmers can claim in annual direct payments. And with the high prices today, the cost of commodity programs is projected to shrink to about $35 billion over the next five years, just 11 percent of the total bill and less than half of federal expenditures for many of the same programs in a comparable 2002-2006 period.
At the same time, nutrition and conservation spending accounts for 76 percent of the bill’s costs, according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office, and this was enough to help hold together most Democrats. And new tax breaks are included to encourage development of new renewable energy sources apart from corn ethanol.
Nonetheless, environmental groups have raised concerns that the agriculture boom risks hampering efforts to conserve native grasslands that have been restored in the Great Plains. And while it increases overall funding for conservation programs, the bill sets a lower target for enrolling lands in the Conservation Reserve Program.
The National Wildlife Federation openly opposed the measure, but, perhaps bowing to political reality, other environmental groups — such as Duck Unlimited and the National Audubon Society — simply expressed their unhappiness without taking a stand against passage.
