Budget Impasse Sets Stage For Separate Farm Bill Approach Of New Growing Season Forces Action

Congress will start work on a separate farm bill next week if no deal emerges to balance the federal budget, the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee said Wednesday.

“We’re getting down to crunch time,” Rep. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., told reporters. Early this month, Roberts introduced just-in-case farm legislation that outlines the same new farm program included in balanced-budget legislation vetoed by President Clinton. Key senators are considering several options as well.

The budget fight caused 1995 to come and go without a measure to determine crop subsidy and acreage levels for major crops. The approach of a new growing season is forcing action.

Congress returns to work next week after Clinton’s State of the Union speech Tuesday. The following Friday, a short-term spending bill that has kept the government in business expires.

The Senate Agriculture Committee, chaired by Republican Sen. Dick Lugar of Indiana, is weighing several possibilities, including tacking farm legislation onto the next short-term spending bill, if a new one is needed.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan., says there needs to be a farm bill by the end of February. “Kansas farmers have already planted their winter wheat without knowing any program details,” Dole said in a recent floor speech.

Dole said he supported the Roberts measure despite serious misgivings and would like to see it as separate legislation or in the budget package.

The measure reduces up to $6 billion in farm program spending over seven years. Farmers would get “market transition payments” based on past subsidies. The fixed payments would decline each year. Government control of most farming decisions would end.

Because payments would be made regardless of crop prices, Dole said there would be “hundreds and hundreds of stories” about big farmers getting big payments. Still he supports its free-market approach.

Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, meanwhile, has held out the threat of using old farm law and his broad discretion under other laws to make program decisions. The 1949 Agricultural Adjustment Act is the permanent farm law that remained when the 1990 farm bill expired.