Copyright 2001 The Omaha World-Herald Company  
Omaha World Herald (Nebraska)
June 21, 2001, Thursday SUNRISE EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 5;

LENGTH: 583 words

HEADLINE: House Committee Backs Bush on Farm-Aid Bill

BYLINE: JAKE THOMPSON

SOURCE: WORLD-HERALD BUREAU

DATELINE: Washington

BODY:
The Bush administration scored a win Wednesday when the House Agriculture Committee approved sending no more than $ 5.5 billion in special aid to America's farmers to help them cope with low prices and surging energy costs.

The committee voted 24-23 for spending $ 1 billion less than the committee chairman, Rep. Larry Combest, R-Texas, had proposed for this year and next.

Rep. Charles Stenholm of Texas, the highest-ranking committee Democrat, co-wrote the smaller aid bill. Under it, the government would send $ 4.6 billion in direct payments to farmers raising corn, wheat, rice and cotton, and set aside another $ 900million to bolster crops such as soybeans, peanuts, fruits and vegetables.

Reps. Tom Osborne, R-Neb., and Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa, voted against the bill. Both said they favored Combest's heftier farm-aid package, which was replaced by Stenholm's alternative.

"I just think the $ 6.5 billion is important in the short term," said Boswell, who represents rural southwestern Iowa. "And the short term is where many of my farmers and producers are right now. I'm concerned about hanging onto them in the next couple of years."

Osborne told his fellow committee members that he's spent a huge amount of time in the last year listening to Nebraska farmers describe their ongoing battle to survive low prices.

And this year there's a new wild card - high energy prices - darkening their earnings prospects, he said.

"There have never been more people, at least in my area, who are hanging on by their fingernails, just about to go over the edge," Osborne said.

If lawmakers had to explain to farmers face to face why budget constraints in Washington limit aid, "you'd have a hard time selling it" to them, Osborne said.

Since 1998, Congress has approved annual supplemental bailouts totaling $ 25 billion to farmers beset by low prices and natural disasters such as floods or diseases, and for livestock producers.

"I think we have a greater emergency in agriculture this year than last year, and possibly the year before," Osborne said.

But spending is penned in by a large federal budget framework Congress approved earlier this year that set aside $ 5.5 billion for farmers. Last week, White House Budget Director Mitch Daniels sent a letter to the Agriculture Committee cautioning that if the committee approved more than that he'd recommend that President Bush not sign it into law.

Combest argued Wednesday that it wasn't enough to cover the minimal needs of those in farm country.

Stenholm agreed that farmers' needs are far higher but insisted that Republicans must live with their own budget framework.

But Wednesday's vote was the first of a summer-long debate over how much farmers will receive in special government subsidies this year.

It also was the opening salvo in an expected white-hot debate over a new farm bill the House Agriculture Committee begins next month. That bill will shape long-term farm policy when the current "Freedom to Farm" law expires next year.

The bill passed Wednesday directs the U.S. Department of Agriculture to cut checks totaling $ 4.6 billion in so-called market transition payments that go to farmers raising wheat, corn, rice, sorghum, oats and other grains.

Another $ 423 million would go to farmers raising soybeans, sunflowers and other oilseeds. The bill sends $ 129 million to tobacco growers and $ 54 million to peanut growers.



LOAD-DATE: June 21, 2001