No language yet and veto threat stands

Nearly everything in the farm bill but the payment limit on program crops - admittedly a big sticking point - is finished, one lobbyist told me today, but no one has seen any language on any of the titles. That will mean more sessions of burning the midnight oil into early next week.

According to his information, specialty crop block grants are funded at close to $500 million (over 10 years) and the fruit and vegetable snack program is funded at a tad over $1 billion. Meanwhile, the restriction on planting fruits and vegetables on program crops has been loosened to now include a 75,000 acre pilot program and removal of program crop benefits to growers with 10 acres or less of base acreage. That would leave those smaller growers free to plant vegetables or fruit crops on that land.

Lawmakers have to draft the bill and get it to the Congressional Budget Office for scoring before they present it to the House and Senate for consideration.

The lobbyist said that there continues to be indications from the White House that President Bush will veto the bill. "Is there enough reform (in the farm bill) for the White House? -' every indication is that is not the case," he said.

Overriding a veto, if it comes to that, will be a close proposition. Only 145 votes are needed to sustain a veto in the House, and some reform-minded lawmakers will be pleased to vote against it.

One lobbyist ruefully told me President Bush should have vetoed the 2002 farm bill if he wanted to make a statement about fiscal policy. A presidential veto of a farm bill reportedly has not happened since the Eisenhower Administration

Check out this coverage from the Time magazine archives in 1956 for a taste of the reception that President Bush will get if he vetoes the farm bill:

Right after President Eisenhower's veto of the farm bill, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson set the style for Democratic reaction. "The veto of the farm bill," keynoted Johnson, "can be described only as a crushing blow to the hopes and the legitimate desires of American agriculture." Then, as other Democrats arose in the Senate to lambaste the President, Johnson sprawled out in his chair, grinned broadly and winked at his party colleagues. Feeling that they had at last been handed a deadly issue against Dwight Eisenhower, other Democrats grinned along with Lyndon Johnson in the early days of last week.

Crucified. Promising that he would call Agriculture Secretary Ezra Benson on his Senate Agriculture Committee carpet within 48 hours, Louisiana's Allen Ellender nonetheless took direct aim at Eisenhower. "The choice was the President's," cried Ellender. "He has chosen to let our farm population dangle at the end of Secretary Benson's flexible noose." Oklahoma's Senator Robert Kerr supplied the oratorical topper: "From his ivory tower at the Augusta country club, where he has been completely insulated from the voice of the people, the President has again acted on the advice of little men who made his decision for him . . . The nails that have been driven into the farmer's hands, the cross upon which he is being crucified, may have been furnished by Benson, but the hammer that drove those nails into the farmer's hands was wielded by the hand of Eisenhower. The hand that placed the crown of thorns upon the farmer's head was the hand of Eisenhower."