Bill would deny insurance when crops fail too often

WASHINGTON — Farmers whose crops regularly fail because of weather, flooding and other problems would lose federally subsidized crop insurance under a spending bill approved by a House subcommittee.

The crop insurance proposal would disqualify growers of crops in counties where a crop has failed 70 percent of the time since 1980.

“We think God is telling us something,” said Rep. Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., on Tuesday. “It is more of a crop loss subsidy program that it is an insurance program.”

Durbin took over this year as chairman of the agriculture subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, which approved the 1994 spending bill Monday.

Rep. Jamie Whitten, D-Miss., had chaired the subcommittee for nearly four decades.

The $70.6 billion measure covers spending for crop subsidies, food stamps and other nutrition programs, commodity market regulation and general operations of the Agriculture Department.

The proposal is one of several to overhaul federally subsidized crop insurance, which the General Accounting Office says cost the government $2.6 billion in the last 12 years. Durbin says the subcommittee proposal would save about $60 million a year.

In addition to overhauling the crop insurance program, the bill eliminates many of the fees the Clinton administration wanted to charge for inspection of meat and grain for safety and quality.

But other fees would be imposed. New fees would cover testing for more cosmetic, marketing oriented standards, such as the length of pickle stems and flown of ketchup.

The highly criticized peanut program would be maintained. But the bill asks for legislation to let the Agriculture Department buy peanut butter for school lunches and other feeding programs at the cheaper world price instead of the U.S. price.