Legislation

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), siding with President Bush and presumptive GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), says he'll vote against the farm bill.

In a press briefing this morning, Boehner cited higher loan limits and target prices, as well as a $200 million payment to Plum Creek Timber, as reasons he would vote against the bill.

The following is a transcript from the briefing:

QUESTION: Mr. Boehner, the conference report for the farm bill was expected to come up next week. And it's got a lot of criticism from the White House. What are your thoughts on that conference report [OFF-MIC] Republican leadership counsel its members on how to vote?

BOEHNER: I've been monitoring the progress of the farm bill talks. And this continued to get worse this week, rather than get better. And I voted against the 2002 farm bill, been a long-time member of the Ag Committee. But I don't think that this farm bill represents our best effort. And, frankly, I think we can do better. So I don't expect that I'll be voting for the farm bill. And beyond that, no decisions have been made about how to proceed.

QUESTION: What are the things you [OFF-MIC]

BOEHNER: I think, in a time of high commodity prices, to be raising loan limits and target prices just really flies in the face of reality. Secondly, when you look at some of the issues that, frankly, don't belong in there, you know, this $200 million payment to Plum Creek Timber as part of a Nature Conservancy buyout strikes me as an egregious earmark. And some of the heady provisions are causing concern. Beyond that, I don't know what other bombshells might be in this bill. We haven't seen it yet.

UPDATED 5:57 p.m.

Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) are seeking to mandate a periodic report on the prevalence of runaway and homeless youth.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) would submit the report to Congress every five years. The report would include population estimates for homeless and runaway individuals aged 13 to 25, and HHS would analyze the demographic's obstacles to finding housing and healthcare, interviewing sample groups as part of its research.

Yarmuth and the senators have included the mandate in bills to reauthorize the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act (RHYA). The first report would come no less than two years after Congress passes the legislation.

According to Leahy spokeswoman Erica Chabot, a 2002 appropriations bill mandated that HHS develop methods for testing incidents of youth homelessness, but a study was never conducted.

Farm bill conferees have postponed a meeting on a tentative spending agreement reached Friday, according to staffers for two conference committee members. The meeting, which was scheduled for 6 p.m. today, had been postponed until tomorrow morning, with the time yet to be determined.

Staffers for conferees said the meeting was postponed due to members' conflicting travel schedules.

Principal members of the farm bill's conference committee reached a tentative agreement Friday on a spending framework for the bill--a framework they had been working on since February. Those members are expected to present that tentative agreement to the full conference committee tomorrow.

That agreement outlined $10 billion in added farm bill spending, along with some guidelines for allocation. After the full conference committee reaches an agreement on that framework, the debate will turn to more specific allocation of funds.

Friday's agreement was reached by Reps. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) and Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), as well as Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), and Kent Conrad (D-N.D.)--all chairmen and ranking members of committees related to the farm bill.

The Senate just passed a bill seeking to outlaw discrimination based on the genetic test results.

It clears the the way for the measure to become law more than 10 years after Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) introduced it. The bill passed the Senate 95-0. The House is expected to pass it next week and the White House has said the president will sign it.

The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act would forbid insurance companies from denying coverage to workers due to genetic makeup. It would also prohibit insurers and employers from forcing employees to undergo genetic tests.

Read Snowe's statement about the bill below:

WASHINGTON D.C.

The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) tomorrow will launch a tour through California, Nevada, and Colorado in opposition of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy for gay and lesbian servicemembers. The tour will start in San Diego, then will proceed to Las Vegas, Denver, and Palm Springs.

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Barack Obama and John McCain, along with fifteen other senators, have signed on to Sen. Wayne Allard's (R-Colo.) letter to President Bush calling for improvements to the military absentee voting process.

In the letter, Allard and the senators note that in 2006, active duty servicemen and women voted at a rate of 42% lower than the general population and that a reported 47% who wanted to vote never got the chance. The letter calls on Bush to act immediately to improve the process.

Hillary Clinton's signature did not appear on the letter.

John McCain, who refused to support a bipartisan measure expanding the G.I. Bill proposed by Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), put forth his own proposal Tuesday.

McCain, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) are calling for an expansion of the Montgomery G.I. Bill, which has provided education benefits for members of the military. They aim to increase the $1,100 of education benefits per month for active duty service member to $1,500. That would increase to $2,000 per month for a member who served on active duty 12 years or more.

Webb's bill, which has the support of Democrats and Republican Sens. John Warner (Va.) and Chuck Hagel (Neb.), also seeks to increase educational benefits for those in the military.

McCain had questioned whether Webb's bill provided enough incentive for its beneficiaries to stay in the military.

"We should encourage service members to remain in the military, and they should be rewarded with additional benefits if they do," he said in a release announcing his proposal.

McCain also had concerns over how the new benefits Webb called for would be administered and whether they could be transferred to family members, said McCain spokesman Robert Fischer.

The Veterans Affairs and Defense departments "know how to work with the current setup for G.I. benefits," Fischer said. "Our bill continues that administration, where Webb's bill creates a new administration delivery." Fischer added that McCain, Graham and Burr's bill would allow the G.I. Bill recipients to give half of their benefits to dependents after six years of service and the entire benefit after 12 years.

Webb spokeswoman Kimberly Hunter said that McCain's bill is more focused on career officers, not the entire volunteer military force. She said that Webb's benefit was designed for those in the military looking to transition to other careers.

"This military does a fine job of managing its career force, but when comes to... the 70 to 75 percent of service members who volunteered and did their time and decided not to re-enlist, they're being left behind and Sen. McCain's legislation continues to do this," Hunter said.

She added that Webb is working with Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) to find a way to administer an enhanced G.I. Bill.

Read more about McCain, Graham and Burr's proposal here. Download a fact sheet of Webb's plan here (.pdf).

For those wondering why Congress can't get a farm bill passed, the Associated Press has a must-read story Saturday.

Reasons for the bill impasse include election-year politics, a smaller discretionary budget and a president in his last year in office, Mary Clare Jalonick writes. And that has led to some acrimonious negotiations.

Read this snippet:

Negotiators face several obstacles. The Democratic chairmen of the House and Senate agriculture committees, Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson and Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, have lost control of the legislation as tax packages were added to both bills to help pay for them and win votes.

That has brought into the mix House Ways and Means Committee chairman Charlie Rangel, who represents few farmers in his New York City district. He and Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., are charged with finding an extra $10 billion for the bill but have agreed on very little.

At a farm bill meeting in Rangel's office Thursday, shouting could be heard behind closed doors. Several senators, including Baucus, left angrily.

"Let's just say it wasn't good," Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., said afterward.

As the House and Senate continue to negotiate over the farm bill, the Senate conferees presented their House counterparts with a new offer today for a framework outlining the bill's $10 billion in new spending and offsets to make that spending deficit neutral.

House conferees said they would take the proposal under advisement, neither accepting nor rejecting the proposal as Ways & Means Committee members were not present.

House Agriculture Committee GOP spokeswoman Alise Kowalski told The Hill that conferees are aiming to agree on a spending framework by next week, but that a one-week timeframe has been in effect for the past month.

President Bush today signed an extension of the previous farm bill that will push back its expiration to next Friday. Kowalski said this was the third extension Bush has signed.

Details of the Senate's offer can be found here.

The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) is circulating a letter sent by the speaker of the Colombian House of Representatives to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). In it, Colombian Speaker Oscar Palacio criticizes Pelosi for her opposition to the U.S-Colombia free trade agreement President Bush sent to Congress April 7.

In the letter, Colombian Speaker Oscar Palacio says the U.S. House's decision to shelve the agreement "affords colonial treatment to us that is unbefitting one of the United States' staunchest allies." The House voted April 10 to circumvent the fast-track law applying to trade deals and shelve the agreement, despite President Bush's attempt to force a vote.

Palacio also says arguments based on violence against Colombian union members are "erroneous." U.S. labor unions have used violence against union members as a cornerstone of their opposition to the deal. The LA Times outlined violence against Colombian unionists in March.

"Under the framework of the Democratic Security Policy, Colombia has made great efforts to prevent crimes of that nature from occurring," Palacio says.

See the text of the letter, as provided by USTR, below. Read more...