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As the farm bill conference report heads to the House floor today for its first test, its supporters hope lawmakers can find enough they like in the bill to give it the significant backing that could overcome a presidential veto.
The mammoth five-year farm bill would set policy for farm, conservation, food and nutrition and rural energy programs. Beyond its standard farm and nutrition programs, it also includes an array of tax benefits and other perks for certain constituencies, including changes in tax code for timber companies and racehorse owners, as well as disaster assistance for the West Coast salmon fishers who were left without a catch this year.
The bill is so large and wide-ranging that there is enough for everyone to find things that they like and things they hate. For many lawmakers and hundreds of advocacy groups, the good overrides the bad.
"In my perspective, it is an imperfect bill ... but I suppose if it was what I thought was perfect, we couldn't get it out of the House," Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.) said last night at the Rules Committee meeting on the measure. "Having said that, I am going to support the bill, I am going to strongly support it because of the food and nutrition title."
The measure is expected to pass in the House and Senate this week, but the question is by how much. Lawmakers backing the bill are anxious to see a strong vote of support today, to show they could gain the two-thirds needed to override a veto.
President Bush confirmed his intentions to veto the bill yesterday -- criticizing its spending levels, crop supports and sugar subsidy program.
"I am deeply disappointed in the conference report filed today as it falls far short of the proposal my administration put forward," Bush said in a statement yesterday. "If this bill makes it to my desk, I will veto it."
Too early to predict
It is unclear how many Republicans will join him. The Senate is expected to easily pass the two-thirds mark, but the margin is much tighter in the House.
"We are trying to assess today ... to see how members feel. I think there is strong support, but it is too early to predict," Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas), a member of the conference committee, said last night.
Eighteen of the 49 House conference committee members did not sign the conference report. The only Senate conferee to withhold his signature was Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), a longtime critic of farm subsidies.
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) has said he will vote against the bill, but so far, GOP leadership has not put the pressure on other lawmakers to join them.
Republican leadership aides said yesterday they have not yet decided if they will encourage all their members to reject the bill. But other Republican aides said if there were going to be a concerted push against the bill, it likely would have started already.
If the vote on the floor resembles the debate in the Rules Committee last night, the farm bill could win wide support. Republicans and Democrats on the committee had favorable words at the meeting, where the panel approved a rule allowing the farm bill to come to the floor.
Democrats said they would have liked more reform of crop subsidies but would back the bill because of its more than $10 billion increase in food stamps. Republicans on the committee, with the exception of Rep. David Drier (R-Calif.), also spoke in favor of the bill.
"This is a bipartisan product, and it is evident this work product is going to receive strong support on the floor," said Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.).
Not perfect, but enough
More than 550 groups -- ranging from the American Farm Bureau, National Farmers Union, American Farmland Trust, National Organic Coalition, American Beekeeping Association and dozens of state and local food banks and other groups -- signed a letter yesterday urging lawmakers to support the bill.
"This is by no means a perfect piece of legislation, and none of our organizations achieved everything we had individually requested," the letter stated. "However, it is a carefully balanced compromise of policy priorities that has broad support among organizations representing the nation's agriculture, conservation and nutrition interests."
The bill has an array of pluses for the environment. It includes millions of dollars in new investment for organic agriculture, money for Chesapeake Bay conservation, a water quality enhancement program aimed at the Sacramento River and "pollinator protection" language to open farm bill conservation programs to habitat protection for bees and other pollinators.
It also includes tax deductions for voluntary habitat for endangered species conservation -- a provision sought by environmental and landowner groups for years.
The conservation title would invest billions of dollars more in working lands conservation programs over the next five years and extend programs to conserve wetlands and grasslands that would otherwise expire.
Those gains for conservation were enough to gain the backing of some groups, such as Pheasants Forever. But most conservation groups are remaining neutral on the overall bill, which they call a mixed bag.
The downside for environmental groups is that it scales back the largest land-retirement program, the Conservation Reserve Program, and fails to include critical safeguards for virgin prairie.
The National Wildlife Federation has come out against the bill, urging lawmakers to support the veto and a one year extension. The group says the combination of permanent disaster funding with the lack of strict protections for native prairies could encourage landowners to plow up more sod, destroying habitat and contributing to global warming.
"If we go for an extension, it would be a tough thing for conservation, several programs would expire or have very low funding," NWF's Julie Sibbing said yesterday. "We're looking at a really tough year if we don't get the farm bill passed at all, but we're looking at policy that is so bad that we would be willing to forego those things for a year to try to get it right."
Other groups that have advocated for greater reform of subsidy programs, including National Taxpayers Union and Oxfam, are also urging lawmakers to reject the bill.
"We prefer anything to this bill coming up," said John Frydenlund of the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste.
Other programs tacked onto the bill include reauthorization of the Commodity Exchange Act with language intended to close the "Enron loophole," new tax benefits for cellulosic ethanol and reductions to the blenders credit for corn-based ethanol.
It also has several provisions to benefit the U.S. timber industry. It includes the "Softwood Lumber Act," which requires importers to make sure their timber is consistent with the terms of international agreements, and tax relief for Weyerhaeuser and other timberlands holders that under current law must pay taxes first before distributing profits to shareholders.
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