Copyright 2001 Boston Herald Inc. The Boston
Herald
November 29, 2001 Thursday ALL EDITIONS
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. 036
LENGTH: 314 words
HEADLINE:
Editorial; Daschle is selling bad bill of goods
BODY: President Bush may be riding high as
commander-in-chief, but on the home front Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle is
eating his lunch.
Daschle is expected to bring to the
floor soon, perhaps today, an outrageous farm bill that would
pay off former Republican Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont with a nationwide dairy
compact to raise milk prices, truly a raid on the wallets of poor families for
the benefit of well-off farmers. It could make a gallon of milk cost 26 cents
more.
And while the farm bill gets
bumped to the top of the Senate's priorities, Daschle insists there is no time
this year to consider an energy bill.
Anybody who takes
Daschle seriously is obviously in the market to buy a bridge in Brooklyn. He
doesn't have the votes to prevent exploring for oil in the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge, which the House version of the energy bill would permit. So he
fills up the Senate's schedule with the farm bill even though
existing farm programs don't expire until next October.
Low current oil prices are no reason not to develop domestic sources
for the long term. Prices will stay down just as long as the economies of the
industrialized world are stalled, and then OPEC will try to climb back into the
driver's seat.
The House has also passed a farm bill that's a hair's breadth less generous than the Senate
bill (authorizing $ 170 billion in subsidies over 10 years instead of $ 174
billion). But the House, perhaps aware that the disappearance of dairy farms
accelerated when the New England milk price-fixing compact operated, refused to
keep that little rip-off alive.
Speaking to a farm
group yesterday, Bush said any farm bill should be "generous
but affordable." Neither the House nor the Senate bill meets that test. If a farm bill lands on his desk, Bush should end Daschle's lunch with
a veto for dessert. He's just made the case for one.
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