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The House gave emphatic support to the farm bill conference report today, indicating that it may be able to override an expected presidential veto.
The bellwether 318-106 vote is a show of force that puts the long-delayed bill into the homestretch to final passage. The Senate is expected to approve the bill as soon as tomorrow morning.
President Bush has vowed to veto the bill, based on his opposition to its crop subsidies, spending levels and sugar support program. But with the strong vote from the House today, it appears Congress may be able to outweigh him. Two-thirds of the House and Senate must vote to override a veto; the 318 votes for the bill today appear to give farm bill supporters a 28-vote cushion.
The mammoth $289 billion five-year farm bill sets policy for crop supports, conservation, rural energy and food and nutrition programs. Beyond its standard farm and food programs, the bill also includes an array of tax benefits and other perks, including tax breaks for timber companies, cellulosic ethanol blenders and voluntary endangered species conservation.
Farm-state lawmakers were able to win wide support with a coalition of members who supported the bill for different reasons, including crop supports, nutrition programs or special programs that would benefit their districts. The conference report would increase spending for conservation programs by $4 billion and gives more than $10 billion extra to nutrition programs, like food stamps and food banks.
Those gains were enough to win over many critics of the bill. Lawmakers filed to the floor today to speak on a common theme: While they opposed some parts of the bill, it had enough to win their support.
"I am going to hold my nose and vote for it," Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), who did not sign onto the conference report, said in an interview. "Half a loaf is better than no loaf."
Lucas did not like the reductions to crop subsidies but said farm groups in his district thought this bill was a better option than revisiting the bill in another year or two. Farm groups in Oklahoma are "frightened to death" of the presidential candidates, Lucas said.
Republican leadership did not whip votes in opposition to the bill, leaving GOP lawmakers free to vote their districts.
The future for the bill now rests on keeping that majority for the veto override. Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas) said some Republicans may reverse their vote to side with the president. "Those folks have to answer another question: What does the president know then that you don't know today?" Conaway said in an interview. "Folks that double-cross themselves, you've got to ask."
The bill would limit crop subsidies for some wealthy landowners. The limits kick in at different levels -- blocking subsidies for landowners with salaries of either $500,000, $750,000 or $1.2 million -- depending on where a landowner makes his money: from the farm or from other, outside sources.
Environmental, taxpayer and hunger advocacy groups had called for stronger limits to crop subsidies. They say the limits included in the bill would affect less than one fraction of 1 percent of farmers. Some of those lawmakers -- including Reps. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Ron Kind (D-Wis.) and Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) -- spoke out against the bill today, with the hope they can gain more detractors for the veto override.
Most conservation groups are neutral on the overall bill, which they call a mixed bag. On the plus side: funding boosts for working lands programs and the extension of two programs to conserve wetlands and grasslands that would have otherwise expired. 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 energy title includes a scaled-down program that would pay farmers to start growing mixed prairie grasses or other alternative cellulose stock. It also has a guaranteed loan program for cellulosic refineries and loans for farmers to improve energy efficiency or produce their own energy, with projects like methane digesters or on-farm biodiesel.
The bill also includes a sugar-to-ethanol program that would require the government to buy surplus sugar from U.S. producers then sell it to ethanol plants.
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