Posted by: Phillip Fraas
May 10, 2008
Topic: REPORTS ON 2008 FARM BILL STATUS--January 2008 To Enactment

Early this week, congressional negotiators on the new farm bill completed their work; and on Wednesday, May 7, the leadership of the House and Senate agriculture committees held a press conference to unveil the legislation. The Secretary of Agriculture quickly followed that with an announcement that President Bush would veto the bill. These developments set the stage for a showdown on the farm bill next week.

What is the fight about? After a couple of months of wrestling with budget issues, dealing with objections raised by the Bush Administration, and hammering out compromises on the many differences between the Senate and House versions of the 2008 farm bill, Congress has come up with a farm bill that is not remarkably different than what the two bodies started out negotiations with. At the end of the process, there will be the payment limitation reforms and and new adjusted gross income (AGI) caps, the increased funding for nutrition and conservation programs, and the new permanent disaster program that the conference committee convened to resolve the Senate-House differences began with, although with some changes in the specifics (too numerous to review in this posting. Should the bill become law, the remainder of the entries in this blog will spell out the details of various key provisions.)

In hewing closely to what the two bodies passed originally, Congress rejected Administration demands for more farm program reforms--such as a lower the AGI cap and revision of the so-called benificial interest rule (having to do with when farmers can lock in program benefits)--and for a smaller increase in farm bill spending. The bill also includes sugar program provisions and upward adjustment of commodity loan and payment rates that the Administration opposes.

What happens next? It is reported that the House and Senate will vote on the final package next Wednesday or Thursday, and it is widely believed that it will easily pass. Then, the clerks likely will enroll the massive bill (it will run many hundreds of pages long) and send it to the White House quickly--keeping in mind that the current extension of the old farm bill runs out on Friday.

Then? Scretary of Agriculture Schafer, at a press conference yesterday, suggested that the President won't waste a lot of time in vetoing the measure. If so, it is possible that Congress could get a veto message back from the President before the end of the week.

What happens after that is just conjecture at this point. If Congress votes to override the veto, that's it; the bill becomes law. If Congress can't muster the votes for an override, some action is necessary to keep existing programs covered by the old farm bill from shutting down. Secretary Schafer, at the press conference, indicated his preference for Congress just stripping out of the legislation the provisions the Administration finds most egregious and sending it back to the President for signing. The other option is a simple extension of the old farm bill. My sense is that recently people have lost interest in that option. What the new bill does that the Administration does not object to is pump an additional $10 billion into nutrition programs. At a time of a weakened economy and high food prices, just about everyone working on the bill would like to see that increased nutrition spending become law.

What are the chances Congress will override the veto?

A week ago, not so good. After all, President Bush has a strong record in having his vetoes sustained.

Now, a lot higher. For one, the ranking Republicans on the agriculture committees, Sen. Chambliss and Cong. Goodlatte, both indicated on Wednesday strong support for the package. Also, word is that President Bush has let it be known that members of Congress can "vote their districts." that is, he will not expect a member to support the Administration position if it is contrary to what the voters in the member's district want. Also, USDA has indicated that the veto override challenge will be an "up-hill battle."

It is too early, though, to take book on a veto override. The final language of the bill won't be released, and the final budget scoring won't come out, until early next week. And, I haven't seen any reports of what the Whip counts are. The real tip-off won't come until the two bodies vote on passage in mid-week. It will no doubt be very comforting to the floor managers of the bill if the final votes in support of the bill are well above the 291 House votes and 67 Senate votes needed to override.

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FARM BILL UPDATE: Congress Completes Work On The Bill; A Showdown With The Administration Looms

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