Bush May Not Stop Farm Bill
By Jerry Hagstrom
5/8/08 1:58 PM

WASHINGTON (DTN) -- Key farm bill negotiators have scheduled a news conference Thursday to release details of a new farm bill amidst signals that President Bush's lack of support for the bill may not stop it from becoming law.

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn., and Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, both said they hope the bill will come up for a vote in their respective chambers next Wednesday. Joking about how frequently the negotiators have said the bill was finished, only to hold another meeting, Peterson said, "This time it is finished off."

After a meeting in the Capitol Wednesday at which the negotiators made changes to the bill to make it fit within CBO scores, House Agriculture Committee ranking member Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., told reporters that President Bush had told him earlier that day he does not support the bill but that House "members need to vote their districts'" interests. "The President did not say anything about vetoing the bill," Goodlatte said. He added that Bush had said he is "still not supportive of the legislation," but had "spoken kindly" of Goodlatte's efforts to include the president's reform priorities in the bill.

Bush's statement to Goodlatte essentially frees members of Congress to vote for the bill, making the possibility of a veto-proof majority in the House as well as the Senate very likely. If Bush vetoes the bill, it would take a two-thirds vote in each chamber to override.

There is also the possibility that Bush could allow the bill to become law without his signature. Under the U.S. Constitution, the bill would become law automatically without the president's signature if he holds it for 10 days with the exception of Sundays. Goodlatte declined to comment on whether Bush would take that route but said, "That's certainly an option that he has."

Bush did not go into details about why he would not support the bill, Goodlatte said. Bush and his aides have said repeatedly that the new farm bill costs too much and does not include enough reform to curb farm subsidy payments to wealthy farmers and landowners. But Democrats have said they believe Bush was hoping to discourage Congress from finishing the bill so he could say in the November elections that a Democrat-led Congress could not write a farm bill.

Goodlatte said he intended to support the bill unless he finds something objectionable in the written conference report. Goodlatte said he did not know whether the bill would garner the two-thirds vote necessary to override a veto. But he said, there is "very, very strong support on both sides of the aisle, but it has not been whipped."

Goodlatte went to the White House as part of a delegation of House members to discuss a variety of issues. The exchange between Goodlatte and the president occurred after a week of tense politicking in which Republicans strategized to try to get the president's support and White House staff deflected their efforts.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., both said they still hoped Bush would sign the bill. "This is the most dramatic reform of any farm bill for a very, very long time," Conrad said.

Harkin and Peterson declined to provide details. But Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, told some reporters the negotiators had decided to ban the direct payments that come whether prices are high or low for nonfarmers with adjusted gross incomes of $500,000 per year and for farmers with adjusted gross incomes of $750,000 per year. Lobbyists said there would also be a ban on conservation payments to people with adjusted gross incomes of $1 million per year, unless two thirds of their incomes come from agriculture or forestry. Lobbyists also said farmers would be able to retain ownership of grain after they receive loan deficiency payments, but those payments would be based on a 30-day rolling average prices rather than a single-day price.

Grassley also said the bill would include a sugar-to-ethanol program and a tax package that would cut the ethanol production tax credit from 51 cents to 45 cents, extend the ethanol tariff for two years and create a $1 tax credit for cellulosic ethanol production. Sources also said an extension of the Caribbean Basin tax preferences and a reduction in tariffs for products from Haiti were also in the bill, as well as extension of a dairy promotion and research assessment to imports and to production from Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.