The administration still objects to spending levels, funding sources and reforms, Schafer told a Agriculture Department conference in Washington"Under its present form, the president is going to veto this bill," Schafer said.The threat is a blow to House-Senate negotiators who made significant progress on the measure last Friday.
After weeks of closed-door negotiations, key negotiators crafted a compromise that would add $10 billion in extra spending and include a scaled-down package of tax incentives favored by the Senate.
Schafer said the administration wants to work with Congress on a bill that Bush would sign, but he was pessimistic the work could be finished soon.
"We hope we can come to conclusion," Schafer said. "I'm not real optimistic we can."
Bush has previously asked Congress to consider a one- or two-year extension of the 2002 farm bill that expired last September. Congress has extended the law through short-term measures, the latest of which expires Friday.
"The president is not interested in signing short-term extension after short-term extension," Schafer told reporters. "There comes a time when we're going to have to call for an extension of current law, and we think we're there now."
Agriculture Committee members have likewise insisted that an extension is not the way to go and said a longer-term extension would be hard to pass in the full House and Senate. Billions of dollars in new funding for conservation, energy and nutrition programs would be lost with an extension.
What the White House wants
The administration's concern is that negotiations have produced a bill that spends too much and still lacks sufficient reform of crop-subsidy programs, Schafer said. With funding shifts and other changes to the bill, the administration estimates it would bring spending close to $18.5 billion over the 10-year baseline.
"If we could get that to the $10 billion level overall, that would make some sense to the administration," Schafer said.
The two chambers each passed their own versions of the five-year law overseeing farm, conservation, energy and nutrition programs last year but have been working to reconcile the two measures and come to agreement on funding and offsets.
The House and Senate tax panels agreed to change customs-user fees to raise much of the additional funding for the bill. The changes do not qualify as taxes, so they have not raised a red flag with the administration.
But the administration is unhappy with the appearance of customs fees in the bill. The customs-user fees were flagged for a separate trade adjustment package. Schafer said "some dealings" remain on funding sources.
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