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Posted on 05/24/2007 9:17:20 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - In Washington, it pays to read the fine print. The Iraq funding bill is a perfect example, studded with provisions to help dairy farmers, airlines, salmon fisherman and rural counties hurt by cutbacks in federal logging.
And that's just scratching the surface.
Take dairy farmers, for example. They're receiving $1.2 billion in help in the Iraq bill as lawmakers clear the way to renew a subsidy program aimed at smaller milk producers.
Then there are airlines like Continental and American, who won a last-minute battle with the White House over a plan that would allow them to together reduce the contributions to their pension plans by almost $2 billion over the next decade.
The language extending the Milk Income Loss Contract, or MILC program, is just one of the provisions hitching a ride on the Iraq measure that couldn't advance on their own. Taken together, they generated lots of enthusiasm among House lawmakers, who approved them by a 348-73 vote. The Senate cleared the war funding bill, 80-14.
Powerful Democrats such as House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (news, bio, voting record), D-Wis., used the war funding bill to shield renewing the MILC program from opponents in western states.
The program makes payments to farmers when milk prices drop. It favors those from states where dairy herds tend to be smaller — such as Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania — since it pays farmers only on the amount of milk produced by about 120 cows in a year.
Western states with their generally larger herds benefit far less, so MILC has many opponents, too, such as Sen. Pete Domenici (news, bio, voting record), R-N.M.
The 12-line MILC provision has its roots in a battle from two years ago over extending the program, which expired briefly in 2005.
Then, opponents such as Agriculture Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (news, bio, voting record), R-Va., grudgingly agreed to renew the program as part of a broader deficit-reduction bill, but only after making sure it wouldn't be factored into budget estimates allotting funds to rewrite the farm bill this year. Goodlatte's move put the MILC program at a disadvantage since it required lawmakers to cut other popular farm programs in order to extend milk subsidies this year.
The war funding bill fixes all that by adding $1.2 billion over five years — violating the spirit of new pay-as-you-go rules requiring increases to farm programs to be "paid for" by cuts elsewhere — to the pot of money available for this year's rewrite of farm programs.
What is more, under arcane budget rules, that money is made available only for the MILC program.
"It makes my job a lot easier," said House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (news, bio, voting record), D-Minn.
The MILC provision is exactly the type of "excessive and extraneous" provision opposed by the White House in earlier veto threats. But President Bush is a fan of the program — or was in 2004 when he endorsed it at a campaign event in the swing state of Wisconsin, which gets the biggest share of MILC payments.
The White House took a firmer — but losing — stand against provisions aimed at helping American and Continental, looking for flexibility in their pension plan contributions.
But American and Continental were backed by Senate powerhouses such as Majority Leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record), D-Nev., and No. 2 Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois, the two airlines were seeking relief comparable to that awarded Northwest and Delta last year.
The White House protested, administration officials said, claiming the provision favoring American ran counter to an agreement to keep wholly new material out of the bill. The provision matched relief provided to Continental in an earlier, vetoed version of the bill.
The two companies, along with a few smaller airlines such as Alaska Air, will be given leeway to reduce contributions to their defined benefit pension plans by a combined total of $2 billion, according to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.
White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten issued a late Wednesday veto threat, White House and congressional officials said, but backed off after Reid insisted the provision go forward.
The 250-plus page measure provided an engine to pull many other provisions into law, including $60 million in help for salmon fishermen, tribes and processors in California and Oregon that have been harmed by lowered Klamath River flows that have wrecked salmon runs.
Also in the Northwest, rural counties harmed by reduced revenues from timber harvested on federal lands, won a one-year, $425 million extension of a federal payment program.
The Wisconsin delegation, its power magnified by last year's elections, orchestrated inclusion of a two-and-a-half year extension of that state's popular SeniorCare prescription drug program.
Senate Appropriations Committee: http://www.appropriations.senate.gov
House Appropriations Committee: http://www.appropriations.house.gov
Summary Box: War-funding bill
The Associated Press
BOWING TO BUSH: The Democratic-controlled Congress grudgingly approved fresh billions for the Iraq war Thursday night, minus the troop withdrawal timeline that drew President Bush's earlier veto.
WAR FUNDING: The legislation includes nearly $95 billion to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through Sept. 30.
ROLL CALL: The Senate vote to send the legislation to the president was 80-14. Less than two hours earlier, the House had cleared the measure, 280-142, with Republicans supplying the bulk of the support.
A bill should be limited to a single subject; otherwise, these absurd mixtures of war funding, milk price supports, and airline company pension plan relief make a mockery of deliberative law-making.
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One thing that fits the bill is called a ‘long title’, used in the UK (etc) under the Westminster System. Under the procedures of Parliament, a Bill cannot be amended or extended (by use of riders, for example) to go outside the scope of its long title. So a bill on stealth bombers would have a long title referring to the funding of stealth bombers, and it would be nearly impossible to attach to that bill the funding provisions for a potato museum, poop art display, minimum wage increase, or the designation of a national chestnut day.
This would never have happened under a Republican controlled Congress. /s
Now if the Democrats really think this is a big waste of the people's time and money how can their concerns be so easily allayed by wasting an even larger amount of time on grand theatrics that encourages the enemy and prolongs or prevents our victory, and a much larger waste of money via pork spending? And now they vow that while having surrendered surrendering temporally, they'll be back to fight harder for surrender later.
Maybe the Democrat's war plan is to incapacitate the enemy with hysterical laughter. Why surge if you're just going to surrender?
Going to war with Democrats on "your side" is alot like having the French as allies.
It is abusive for sure. However, if we limited bills to a single subject, the give and take and compromise would still occur, but it would be less transparent to the voter what was going on behind the scenes as bills would appear disconnected even though voting commitments had been traded. Also, I doubt there is an easy was to split “subjects” as any effort would be arbitrary in nature. I think they should separate bills into categories, but introduce procedures for approving a cluster of bills atomically.
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