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Farm bill sails through committee but still faces chance of floor fight |
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By Ian Swanson
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Posted: 07/20/07 12:06 PM [ET] |
The House Agriculture Committee unanimously approved a new five-year farm bill last night, building momentum for a floor fight expected as early as next week as House members seek more dramatic farm policy reforms.
By voice vote, Democrats and Republicans on the committee rallied around a chairman’s mark, introduced this week by panel Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), that imposes lower income ceilings for receiving government subsidies so that the nation’s wealthiest farmers could no longer apply.
Even opponents of the bill offered support to Peterson yesterday. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns, who had criticized an earlier chairman’s mark, appeared before the committee to compliment Peterson for building a farm bill on administration suggestions.
Johanns stopped short of endorsing the bill and said more work needs to be done, but he also said he hoped the committee would approve the Peterson bill.
As late as Monday, some committee Democrats had publicly expressed worries that Republicans might withhold support for the measure to force Democrats to pass a farm bill on their own, which would be difficult given demands by some Democrats for broader changes to farm policy.
“Those who are in the minority … saw if this farm bill languished, it could help Republican opponents,” said former committee ranking member Charlie Stenholm (D-Texas), who now lobbies on agriculture issues.
There are eight freshman Democrats on the agriculture committee, and they could have been particularly vulnerable to charges that Democrats had failed to approve a farm bill when in power, lobbying sources said.
But as the markup dragged on Thursday, there were few signs of partisan fighting. Stenholm and committee Democrats heaped praise on Peterson for working closely with ranking member Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) to build a bipartisan farm bill that won support from members representing different regions of the county.
Among those were groups representing so-called specialty crops, who hailed the bill’s provisions granting producers of fruits and vegetables $1.7 billion over five years. The measure won support for the bill from California Democrats like Jim Costa and Dennis Cardoza, and the Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance said it would support the bill’s passage on the floor.
“Credit goes to Chairman Peterson and ranking member Goodlatte,” said Costa, who said an open and transparent process had resulted in few partisan spats.
One exception was a proposed non-binding amendment by Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.) that no tax increases be used to offset spending in the act. Because the bill would increase funding for food stamps, Musgrave and other Republicans said they wanted to rule out that tax increases would be used to pay for it.
Peterson ruled the amendment out of order on jurisdictional grounds. Decrying the measure as partisan, he said he had heard no suggestions that Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) was considering any tax increases to pay for farm bill provisions.
Johanns earlier this year proposed that farmers with adjusted gross incomes of more than $200,000 be ineligible to receive federal farm subsidies. Peterson’s bill borrows from that idea, but only would lower the current $2.5 million ceiling to $1 million. Most estimate that this measure would save $522 million over 10 years, but Johanns told reporters the proposal would save as much as $1.5 billion.
Peterson called for the lower ceiling over the opposition of some commodity groups and the American Farm Bureau Federation so that he could meet the request of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who had asked him to deliver a farm bill that the panel could present as a reform package to the Democratic Caucus.
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