The long-overdue farm bill has set up a crucial election-year face-off that will have consequences for farm-state members up for reelection, and has kept busy an army of lobbyists who represent everything from chick pea growers to ethanol refiners.

After bill negotiators announced the outlines of an agreement last week, the Bush administration vowed to veto it.

Perhaps the biggest change the bill proposes is capping eligibility for direct subsidy payments to farm income that does not exceed $750,000 and non-farm income above $500,000.

It took lawmakers weeks of backroom negotiations to arrive at those figures, but White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said on Monday that the reforms still fell short of White House hopes.

“There might have been some concessions on both sides. It still doesn’t do enough,” Perino said.

“It still has too much spending, and not enough reform. And they had an opportunity to do more this year, and they decided not to,” Perino said.

But lobbyists for rice and cotton industries, which had fought steeper cuts, said they would oppose any further reductions. The growers argue that their production costs are much higher than the costs for corn or wheat growers — diesel pumps, for example, have to be used to keep rice fields flooded for up to three and a half months, an expensive proposition when oil prices are more than $120 a barrel.

“We have concerns with going as low as we have,” one lobbyist said.

The industries nevertheless are supporting the bill.

Another potential complication emerged over the weekend with a score that showed a budget shortfall during the first five years of the program. Senate aides said the gap would be fixed by shifting certain corporate tax revenues forward. Although that issue was not expected to present a major threat to the bill’s passage, it may delay debate.

In lieu of an agreement, Congress has extended the farm bill passed in 2002 beyond its natural life to preserve farm support programs. But rural lawmakers especially were looking to its $300 billion price tag to tout back home during Memorial Day recess.

Ag lobbyists said they were confident they had the votes in the Senate to override a veto. They were less sure where things stood in the House, where House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) has already said he would vote no.

Michael Steel, a spokesman for Boehner, said Republican leaders had not decided whether to whip the bill. But lobbyists said members were being told to “vote their districts,” meaning they could support the measure without fearing any consequence from leadership.

“I don’t think Boehner is going to want to stab Goodlatte in the back,” one lobbyist said, referring to Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), the ranking member on the House Agriculture Committee.