The Senate joined the House in voting to overturn the president's veto
of the five-year farm bill, bucking the White House with emphatic
support for the $286 billion measure, despite questions over a missing
section of the bill.
The 82-13 vote in the Senate enacted more than 90 percent of the five-year farm bill
into law. Left out of the mix was assistance for the U.S. softwood
lumber industry -- part of the trade title Democrats said they
inadvertently omitted due to a clerical error.
"I want to make sure there's no doubt in anyone's mind," Senate
Agriculture Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said on the floor at the
conclusion of the vote. "Fourteen of the 15 titles in this farm bill are now law."
Congress
approved the 34-page trade title as part of the mammoth farm bill
conference report last week, but it was missing from the version that
Bush vetoed. The omission will require lawmakers to send another bill
to Bush next month to enact the international food aid program and the
certification program for softwood lumber that were included in the
trade title.
Despite complaints from some Republicans that the action could violate the Constitution and invite legal challenges, the farm bill
veto override saw strong votes of support in both the House and Senate.
The House voted 316-108 on Wednesday to override the veto. Both
chambers were well above the two-thirds margin needed to overturn a
veto.
"It seems the that the congressional debate on the
pork-laden farm bill is coming to an inglorious conclusion," White
House spokesman Scott Stanzel said after the vote. Bush vetoed the bill for spending too much money and not moving far enough to reform crop subsidies.
The farm bill
vote was the second time lawmakers have been able to outweigh Bush in
the past eight years. The only other override came for the Water
Resources Development Act last year.
Like WRDA, which oversees billions of dollars for local water projects, the farm bill had a variety of programs that hit home for lawmakers.
More than half of farm bill
funding goes to food stamps and other nutrition programs. It also
includes more than $4 billion in new investment for conservation
programs, new support programs for fruit and vegetable growers and
organic farmers, incentives intended to spur cellulosic ethanol and the
extension of most crop support programs.
Lumber left hanging
Left in limbo with the missing
trade title is a certification program for softwood lumber long-sought
by the U.S. timber industry.
The lumber certification program comes in response to the agreement Canada and the United States struck on timber two years ago.
The
U.S. timber industry has complained that Canada has not kept up with
its obligation under the agreement to impose export taxes on lumber
sent to the United States. The language in the farm bill
would require importers to certify that all lumber shipments are
consistent with the trade agreement and that all export taxes will be
paid.
Lawmakers will now seek to take up the trade title
on its own or vote again on the entire farm bill when they return from
the Memorial Day recess. The House voted again yesterday, 306-110, to
pass all 15 titles of the farm bill -- sending that bill to the Senate as an option to fix the error.
"We're not sure where we'll be when we get back; there is a chance we will have to take up the bill again," said Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.). "But we hope over the next few days we can smooth this over."
Re-passage of the farm bill may force them to go through the motions of the veto and override process again, but this time with all of the papers.
'Constitutional quagmire?'
Democratic lawmakers said
the decision to move forward on the veto override came after extensive
consultation with parliamentarians, where they decided they could enact
the abbreviated bill and pass the
missing trade title later. House Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson
(D-Minn.) said an 1892 court case gave them the legal precedent.
"It
is totally constitutional to do what we're planning to do, so no one
should be concerned about that," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
(D-Nev.) said before the Senate vote.
Republicans and
Democrats both agreed the omission of the trade title was a clerical
error and an honest mistake. But House Republican leadership cried foul
because of concerns over what sort of precedent the vote could set --
approving a bill that is technically different than the previously passed legislation.
"I
am not trying to block the farm bill from becoming public law -- I saw
there were only 108 of us that wanted to do that," Rep. David Drier
(R-Calif.) said on the House floor. "But the notion that all a sudden
we are taking a part of one bill and that bill is not all one created tremendous confusion and a potential constitutional quagmire."
Agriculture
Committee members said the error arose because of a technical glitch
amidst the complicated paperwork process Congress goes through as part
of the routine to make a bill into
law. Part of that process includes the tradition of sending bills to
the president on parchment paper. Congressional clerks proof the bills
on standard paper first, so no mistakes are made on the more expensive
parchment.
Once the hundreds of pages of the farm bill
were printed on parchment, the clerks did not check them again. It was
not until after Bush officially vetoed the bill that anyone noticed pages were missing.
"This
is just an error, and now we have to fix this, and that is what we are
doing," Peterson said. "I apologize if some people's feelings were
hurt, but we were doing the best we could."
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