Publication: Bemidji Pioneer
Author: Brad Swenson
December 8th, 2007 - A brokered deal agreeable to U.S. Senate Republicans should clear the way for floor consideration of a federal farm bill, as soon as Tuesday.
“We have a path forward — we will get a farm bill,” Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., told Minnesota reporters in a Friday morning telephone news conference.
Coleman said he helped broker the deal by seeing that the major roadblock to considering the five-year farm bill would be removed. Republicans had balked when Democrat leaders wanted the bill considered without any amendments to it.
As a result, a vote for cloture, or to cut off debate and move to a floor vote, fell five votes short of the 60 it needed in a vote last month.
The brokered deal, however, has Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., accepting 40 amendments for consideration — 20 from Democrats and 20 from Republicans, which each caucus deciding on their own measures.
“The original problem was an effort by the Democrat leader to block any amendments by what they call filling the tree,” Coleman said. “It’s an unusual process.”
Filling the tree means a decision that the bill is full, with no room for any amendments.
The deal to allow 40 amendments, however, falls in line with previous farm bills, Coleman said. The 2002 Farm Bill had 49 amendment votes, including 25 roll-call votes, he said, and the 1996 version got 26 amendment votes and 11 roll-call votes. In 1990, there were 113 amendment votes with 22 roll-call votes.
“So clearly an effort to short-circuit debate by filling the amendment tree and seeking cloture failed,” Coleman said, noting that he and three other GOP senators did side with Democrats in voting for cloture.
Coleman said he argued to accept the deal in a meeting Thursday with fellow Senate Agriculture Committee Republicans, saying the limited amendments offers both sides the opportunity to consider amendments — which may or may not be germane to the farm bill.
“It was my strong feeling that to argue there will be no amendments to be allowed by filling the amendment tree was something I could understand my colleagues fighting against,” Coleman said. “But we reached the point where we’ve got 20 amendments on each side, which is pretty close historically to what we’ve done.”
He strongly urged ranking Ag Committee Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia to authorize Senate GOP leadership to accept the deal, with the hopes of passing it out of the Senate before a potential Dec. 21 adjournment.
“We need a farm bill, we need to get something done,” said Coleman, who faces a tough re-election bid next year in a farm state. “I like this farm bill the way it is. I haven’t seen any amendments, but there will be few that I will be voting for.”
Fellow Ag Committee member Sen. Amy Klobuchar, DFL-Minn., hailed the logjam breakup, and as farm bill debate opened on Friday, she offered her amendment denying farmers making more than $750,000 from receiving commodity subsidy payments.
Klobuchar, in floor statement Friday, called the bill on the floor “a forward-looking farm bill’’ that would foster advances in cellulosic biofuels and improve rural conservation programs. The bill also creates a permanent program of disaster assistance, while preserving a strong safety net for farmers and strengthening federal nutrition programs.
But she said the bill would be even stronger with the amendment she offered which would limit participation in the commodity programs to full-time farmers with incomes less than $750,000 per year, after expenses, and part-time farmers with incomes under $250,000 after expenses.
“This would ensure that urban millionaires do not pocket the farm subsidies intended for hardworking farmers,” Klobuchar said. “We’re proud that we have produced a farm bill that is fully paid-for and fiscally responsible, but that also requires us to make sure that federal resources go to farmers who genuinely need them.”
Klobuchar said she hopes her measure will be one of the 20 that Democrats put on the floor for a vote.
Time is short to pass a farm bill, as farmers are now actively planning their next crop year and need to make financing arrangements with bankers. Still, Senate passage won’t ensure a final bill before 2008, as it would move to a conference committee with the House version, which was passed in July.
And while President Bush may veto the bill, Coleman told reporters Friday that only administrative officials have signaled a veto, not Bush himself.
“I would hope that he would not,” Coleman said. “I’m going to do everything in my power to urge him not to do that.”
Moving forward with deliberation of the $286 billion farm bill is a good thing for Minnesota farmers, said Minnesota Farm Bureau President Kevin Paap, who was on Coleman’s conference call.
“Farm Bureau believes the political process must be given its time to work, but we also remind the senators that we in production agriculture need certainty. We’re locking in inputs, we’re planning for next year’s crops.”
Paap said farmers are now making decisions “of what gets planted where next year, and as we meet with our bankers, we need some certainty.”
Asked if Ag Committee GOP senators bent to Coleman because of his re-election bid, Coleman said they may have, but that he would have fought as hard for the bill in a non-election year as well.
“My colleagues understand agriculture and they understand politics,” he said. “Anytime I ever vote for anything, it’s always put in the guise of, ‘well, he’s up for re-election.’ I can assure you I would have taken the same course of action had I not been up for re-election.
“This is fundamentally the right thing to do for the people I represent,” he added. “Good policy is good politics — this certainly is good policy.”
If a farm bill isn’t passed, Congress may extend the current 2002 Farm Bill, but farm state senators want the new bill as it carves new territory in renewable energy, cellulostic ethanol and in creating a permanent disaster fund.
The new bill also helps Red River Valley sugar beet producers with a better loan rate, and provisions to study sugar to ethanol processes.
The Bush administration dislikes disaster aid, let alone making it permanent, and contends the farm bill doesn’t go far enough to curb subsidies to wealthy farmers.
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