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Agriculture: Help targets drought, wildfires, heavy snow
Lucas works on bill to aid state farmers; If approved despite lawmaker resistance, it would cover only a portion of losses.
By Chris Casteel
The Oklahoman
February 18, 2007
WASHINGTON - Rep. Frank Lucas, who has been trying for nearly two years to secure disaster aid for the nation's farmers, has been working behind the scenes on a relief package that would mean "substantial" help for Oklahoma producers hit by drought, wildfires and heavy snow.
Lucas, R-Cheyenne, said he has been pushing to get money included in the emergency spending bill that Congress must pass in the next few weeks to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"I've been working on this non-stop," Lucas said. "I think there is a real window of opportunity for money to be added to the military appropriations bill."
Lucas, whose district includes most of western Oklahoma and the farming and ranching communities there, recently introduced relief legislation similar to a bill that died in the past Congress. The bill provides a system of distributing aid for a number of disasters.
As high as $4 billion
In an interview last week, Lucas said the cost of the bill could be as high as $4 billion.
He said the legislation would not cover multiple disasters for an individual farmer. Instead, he said, farmers and ranchers would have to pick one fiscal year out of the last three - including the one that began Oct. 1 - in which they suffered the worst loss. The aid in his bill would cover only a percentage of that loss, he said, not the entire amount.
"If you're a wheat farmer in western Oklahoma, you might pick (fiscal year) 2005 or 2006" because of the drought, Lucas said. "If you're in Cimarron County and your cattle are under a snowdrift, you might pick '07."
Fast and efficient
He said his legislation uses procedures employed in the past to distribute disaster aid and would make the delivery to farmers fast and efficient. Lucas said the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee told him recently his bill would probably be the most effective of those proposed.
Because Oklahoma farmers and ranchers have been victimized by disasters including drought, snow and wildfires in the past three years, the state's producers would receive a "substantial" amount of money, Lucas said.
Several lawmakers in the House and Senate pushed for disaster relief late last year. However, major spending decisions were delayed when the Republican Congress failed to pass the appropriations bills for the Agriculture Department and most other government departments and agencies.
Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said he would push for disaster aid on the emergency spending bill for the military. Congress is expected to take up that measure in the next few weeks.
Dorgan and about a dozen other senators recently sent a letter to President Bush asking for a meeting on the issue of disaster relief. The letter states:
"Although the vast majority of the producers we represent carry crop insurance to help them manage the risks inherent in agriculture, crop insurance was never designed to cover repeated years of devastating weather or livestock losses sustained by ranchers. As a result, many farm and ranch families badly need an agricultural disaster relief package if they are to stay on the land."
Wrong message?
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Muskogee, who opposed a Senate disaster relief package debated late last year, raised the issue of crop insurance, arguing that the disaster aid proposal sent a message to farmers that they didn't have to buy the protection.
Coburn and other fiscal conservatives may object to any disaster aid being part of the war funding bill since it would be considered emergency spending and wouldn't be offset by spending cuts in other areas.
Lucas said the disaster aid money would be added to the federal debt and predicted that support "will be a challenge for fiscal conservatives" in both parties.
He said Democratic leaders also may try to hold down the cost of the aid package to be consistent with their calls for fiscal discipline.
Portion of losses
In the last Congress, Lucas' legislation was less expensive than other proposals, including ones pushed late last year in the Senate. He emphasized last week that his proposal would only cover a portion of farmers' losses.
"These government programs will never make anybody whole," he said.
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