Another extension has been granted to the current Farm Bill – this time for two weeks. Lawmakers are grappling with several key issues, among them a stalemate with President Bush.
There were signs the bill could become an issue in the presidential campaign. The Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting, Arizona Sen. John McCain, announced in Des Moines that he would veto the bill if he were president.
A key senator said negotiators were considering tighter subsidy limits on wealthy farmers to address some of Bush administration’s sharp criticism of the bill.
“We are trying to be responsive to the president’s concerns,” said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D.
A deal reached among congressional negotiators earlier this week would increase by as much as 25 percent the amount of direct payments that millionaire grain and cotton farms could collect each year.
A married couple with as much as $1.9 million in annual net farm income could qualify for the maximum $100,000 in payments. The payments, a relic of the 1996 farm bill, are fixed according to the crops that farms have historically grown.
Bush has problems with a number of items in the bill lawmakers are writing, including a two-year extension of the 54-cent-per-gallon tariff on imported fuel ethanol, according to lawmakers. But the administration has directed most of its rhetorical fire on the bill’s subsidy eligibility rules.
Conrad, a leading Senate negotiator on the bill, said late Thursday that both the subsidy limit and the income limit were under discussion among lawmakers.