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Farm subsidies { May 14 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11478-2002May13.htmlNonetheless, some environmental groups contend that the bill will endanger the few remaining family farms because of the massive new support for the largest growers, which critics call factory farms. Environmental Defense, a nonprofit group that pushed for the bill's conservation measures, said it will give large farmers "unprecedented funds to swallow up their smaller neighbors."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11478-2002May13.html
Bush Signs Bill Providing Big Farm Subsidy Increases
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 14, 2002; Page A01
CHICAGO, May 13 -- President Bush, setting aside his rhetorical devotion to free markets, signed a farm bill today that will shower billions of dollars in new subsidies on bread-basket states that will help determine control of Congress in November's elections.
Earlier this year, the president called for a bill that was "generous but affordable." Today, he simply called it generous. "It will promote farmer independence, and preserve the farm way of life for generations," Bush said. "It helps America's farmers, and therefore it helps America."
The bill has infuriated crucial U.S. trading partners in Europe and Asia, and repudiates a Republican-championed 1996 law designed to wean farmers from government funds. It is estimated to cost $190 billion over 10 years -- $83 billion more than the cost of continuing current programs, and increasing by two-thirds the payments for grain and cotton farms, most of them large operations.
A senior Republican official said Bush, after opposing the bill's costliest provisions last fall, capitulated because the most fertile ground for gaining the one Senate seat needed for a Republican takeover lies in the farm states of South Dakota, Montana, Minnesota, Missouri, Iowa and Georgia.
The farm bill is the latest of several politically sensitive measures -- notably tariffs on steel imports and new restrictions on the financing of federal campaigns -- that Bush has approved this year despite taking contradictory positions during his presidential campaign. Some conservatives in Congress and elsewhere protested his endorsement of the farm bill as a betrayal of principle.
Sources said Karl C. Rove, Bush's chief political adviser, told Republican senators at a private luncheon last week that the White House recognized the bill could undermine Bush's claims to fiscal responsibility. Rove joked that Bush might sign it "by candlelight," the sources said.
In fact, the president signed the law at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at 7:45 a.m., before leaving for a day-long trip to Illinois. Bush advisers said the timing was designed to minimize exposure in Washington and maximize it on early-morning crop broadcasts in farm regions.
"It's not a perfect bill," the president said. "I know that. But you know, no bill ever is."
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Agriculture Committee, said the bill provides "more support for conservation than any farm bill in history." The $17 billion in conservation provisions includes grants to help farms reduce manure runoff.
Nonetheless, some environmental groups contend that the bill will endanger the few remaining family farms because of the massive new support for the largest growers, which critics call factory farms. Environmental Defense, a nonprofit group that pushed for the bill's conservation measures, said it will give large farmers "unprecedented funds to swallow up their smaller neighbors."
During the 2000 campaign, Bush praised the 1996 "Freedom to Farm" bill for encouraging farmers to "rely less on government control of supply and more on market demand." The White House was sticking to that philosophy in October, when the administration issued a statement declaring that the Republican-backed House farm bill locked in too much long-term federal spending and would increase the disparity between large producers and small farmers.
At the time, Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman said the bill would encourage overproduction and jeopardize overseas markets for U.S. farm products. "This creates pressure for more government payments, thereby creating a self-defeating and ultimately unsustainable cycle," Veneman said in November. When the bill received final passage early this month, Bush congratulated the conference committee "for a job well done," while noting with considerable understatement that it "did not satisfy all of my objectives."
Chuck Conner, special assistant to the president for agricultural trade and food assistance, said the final bill reflects Bush's most important principles. "Farmers are hurting right now," he said.
The bill, which also covers food stamps, reinstates benefits for adult legal immigrants who have lived in the United States for at least five years, with no minimum residency requirement for their children or the disabled. Bush pointed to that provision today when he called the measure "a compassionate bill."
The Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002, as the bill is called, also restores price supports for wool and mohair and provides new subsidies to New England's dairy farmers. But it is the growers of staple crops who will receive most of the bill's new money. Peanut farmers will collect about $4 billion more over 10 years and, for the first time, in direct checks. The corn support price will rise from the current $1.89 a bushel to $1.98 this year and next, and then drop by 2 cents a bushel.
In an effort to limit the benefits that can be paid to large agricultural operations, Senate Democrats had sought an annual payment cap of $275,000 per farm. Under a compromise agreement with the House, top payments were set at $360,000 -- down from the current $460,000 ceiling. But loopholes will allow several operators to receive larger payments.
Federal farm support programs date to the early 1930s, when 25 percent of the population lived on the nation's 6 million farms, most of them small. Today, the United States has 2 million farms, which are home to 2 percent of the population. Large commercial operations now dominate, with Agriculture Department figures showing that 8 percent of farms account for 72 percent of sales.
The new bill, which must be renewed after six years, replaces the yearly assistance Congress has approved since farm prices languished following passage of the 1996 act. Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, said the new law "assures farmers and our lenders that we will have an adequate safety net in place and prevent the need to rely on emergency assistance in the future."
Several Republicans complained that the bill will further strain the federal budget at a time when deep deficits are predicted. Sen. Richard G. Lugar (Ind.), the Agriculture Committee's ranking Republican, was invited to attend today's ceremony but did not because of his opposition to the bill, which he called "a recipe for a great deal of hurt and sadness, and at the expense of a huge transfer payment from a majority of Americans to a very few."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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