$286 billion farm bill wins Senate approval Crop subsidies, food stamps would be expanded

WASHINGTON – The Senate on Friday approved a $286 billion farm bill with an election-year expansion of subsidies for growers and food stamps for the poor.

The bill, passed on a 79-14 vote, expands subsidies for wheat, barley, oat, soybeans and several other crops and creates new grants for vegetable and fruit growers.

It also increases loan rates for sugar producers, extends dairy programs and provides more dollars for renewable energy and conservation programs to protect environmentally sensitive farmland over the next five years.

President Bush has threatened to veto the legislation, saying it costs too much and should instead be cutting subsidies at a time of record-high crop prices. He also has threatened to veto a House version passed in July.

Unlike the Senate, the House did not approve the bill by a veto-proof majority, or two-thirds of the chamber. That vote was 231-191.

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine voted against the measure, saying she was particularly disappointed because it did not include an amendment to cap payments to farmers at $250,000. The defeat of that amendment, and another to prohibit payments to anyone earning more than $750,000 a year, “ensures that taxpayer subsidies in this new farm bill will continue to flow to the largest and wealthiest farmers in the country, while potato, apple, and blueberry growers in Maine will receive very little assistance,” Collins said.

Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, voted in favor of the bill.

White House opposition and criticism from fiscal conservatives have so far had little impact on the politically popular bill.

Farm-state senators deflected several attempts to derail the bill and reduce government payments to large growers. Still, even some from farm country acknowledged the bill doesn’t do enough to trim the government’s massive subsidy programs.

Senate Agriculture Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, had hoped to take significant steps to reduce subsidies but was blocked by Southern lawmakers on the committee who favor current law. Southern crops such as rice and cotton are more expensive to produce than corn, wheat and most other crops grown around the country.

Harkin had said earlier he wanted to reduce direct payments to farmers, which are paid regardless of crop yield, but opposition to the idea was fierce among farmer interest groups. Harkin eventually dropped the plan.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., called the bill a “good beginning,” though he said it wasn’t everything that Harkin would have liked.

“We also had to deal with some of the realities of our different states,” Conrad said.

Harkin called it a good bill after it passed.

“We can take it home,” he said.

While the House and Senate bills are similar, significant differences will have to be worked out after Congress reconvenes in January.