Posted by: Phillip Fraas
May 26, 2008
Topic: REPORTS ON 2008 FARM BILL STATUS--January 2008 To Enactment

As expected, on Wednesday May 21, President Bush vetoed the farm bill. The bill went back to Congress the same day, where the House voted, by a margin of 316 to 108, to override the veto (two-thirds of the legislature, or 291 votes in the House and 67 in the Senate, must approve an override for it to be effective). The next day, the Senate followed suit and voted to override by a margin of 82 to 13. At that point, the bill became law.

Wednesday, however, a procedural glitch was discovered that sowed a lot of confusion about the effect of the veto and override votes. It was discovered that title III of the bill that the two houses had debated and voted on had accidentally been left out of the "engrossed" bill (the bill prepared by the clerks after the members of Congress complete their actions on it) signed by the Speaker of the House and Majority Leader of the Senate and sent to the President earlier in the week. Title III of the bill deals with international trade in agricultural commodities and foreign food aid.

By Thursday afternoon, just before Congress adjourned for a one-week recess, the Senate and House clerks had reviewed the precedents and concluded that the other fourteen titles of the bill included in the text sent to the President had become law when the President's veto of that document was overridden. Title III, however, is still not law. Congress will have to take additional action when it returns to session next week to re-enact title III.

Now, USDA will have to begin the daunting task of writing regulations and updating policies to put the new farm bill in effect. Because many of its provisions affect on-going programs or 2008 crops, the pressure will be on to move through the implementation process quickly.

In the meantime, I will start of new topic area for this blog to review the key provisions of the new farm bill. With fourteen titles, there is a lot in there to cover. I'll start out in a couple days with a summary of the the commodities price and income support title--the heart of any farm bill.

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FARM BILL UPDATE: After A Procedural Glitch, Most Of The Farm Bill Enacted Into Law

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