ASHINGTON, May 8 — The Senate today passed and sent to the White House an election year farm bill that greatly increases spending on agriculture and reverses a six-year-old decision to wean farmers from subsidies.Posted on 05/08/2002 11:05:28 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
ASHINGTON, May 8 — The Senate today passed and sent to the White House an election year farm bill that greatly increases spending on agriculture and reverses a six-year-old decision to wean farmers from subsidies.
Although the administration had resisted many of the subsidies in the legislation and a majority of Senate Republicans voted no, President Bush has said he will sign the measure.
Along with expanding big payments for grain and cotton farmers, the measure would also expand the food stamp program and restore the right of legal immigrants to receive them. The legislation also increases money for conservation and other environmental measures.
The House-Senate conference report, which the House passed last week, was adopted today, 64 to 35. Voting for the bill were 43 Democrats, 20 Republicans and 1 independent. Seven Democrats and 28 Republicans were opposed.
Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who is chairman of the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, said the bill restored a safety net for farmers that the 1996 Freedom to Farm bill had weakened.
"This farm bill," Mr. Harkin said, "marks a new beginning by investing in the security and success of our farm families and in the economic future of our rural communities."
Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the majority leader, said, "For the first time in many years, we will be able to send a message of hope to the farmers and ranchers of this country."
But the senior Republican on the committee, Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, sharply disagreed. He said it would cause farmers to overproduce and would drive down prices and provide large subsidies to a few large farmers. He called the bill "an attempt in a closely divided Congress to try to help individual Senators and House members, with the thought that party control of either body may be a much more important objective than careful economic analysis or maybe even careful stewardship of the funds for which we are responsible."
The estimated 10-year cost of the bill is $180 billion, $70 billion more than the cost of current programs, and it would include $40 billion in subsidies for large cotton and grain farms.
Must be part of Bush's strategerie. He is too coward to veto this bill. Come to think of it, if the job of the President is to sign everything coming his way, I can handle the job myself. Oh wait, I don't have a daddy who can get me the job.
Now your Somali friends won't starve.
Congratulations on keeping a tab on the Bush fallacy...that he is a conservative. Now we know why those so-called tax cuts are phased in over 10 years...'cause there is no way to pay for this kind of spending without lying about tax cuts. We will never see the full promised tax cuts.
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