Tag: Veto

House Overrides Farm Bill Veto

The House has overridden President Bush’s veto of a $290 billion farm bill and senators soon may follow suit.

It was only hours before the House’s 316-108 vote Wednesday that Bush had vetoed the five-year measure. He said it was too expensive and gave too much money to wealthy farmers when farm incomes are high.

The legislation includes election-year subsidies for farmers and food stamps for the poor — spending that lawmakers could promote when they are back in their districts over the Memorial Day weekend.

The Senate is expected to begin consideration of the bill Thursday. There are expected to be enough votes to reject the veto.

The veto was the 10th of Bush’s presidency. Congress has overridden him once, on a water projects bill.

The bill includes gthe following:

_Boost nutrition programs, including food stamps and emergency domestic food aid, by more than $10 billion over 10 years. It would expand a program to provide fresh fruits and vegetables to schoolchildren.

_Increase subsidies for certain crops, including fruits and vegetables excluded from previous farm bills.

_Extend dairy programs.

_Increase loan rates for sugar producers.

_Urge the government to buy surplus sugar and sell it to ethanol producers for use in a mixture with corn.

_Cut a per-gallon ethanol tax credit for refiners from 51 cents to 45 cents. The credit supports the blending of fuel with the corn-based additive. More money would go to cellulosic ethanol, made from plant matter.

_Require that meats and other fresh foods carry labels with their country of origin.

_Stop allowing farmers to collect subsidies for multiple farm businesses.

_Reopen a major discrimination case against the Agriculture Department. Thousands of black farmers who missed a deadline would get a chance to file claims alleging they were denied loans or other subsidies.

_Pay farmers for weather-related farm losses from a new $3.8 billion disaster relief fund.

Farm Bill Veto–We Can Only Hope

I wrote about this recently and after looking over the bill itself, I would like to explain why I say that the Farm Bill needs to be voted by the President.  I know…..few believe that I would actually be on the side of Bush on anything, but The Farm Bill veto has more support.

A few things about the bill that makes a veto imperative.

  • The bill provides no real relief for US counties with the highest rates of poverty, since subsidies mainly benefit the wealthy owners of corporate farms.
  • The bill grants subsidies for crops like corn, wheat, cotton, rice and soybeans — US imports dumped into poorer countries, hurting subsistence farmers in these countries and hindering farmers in other countries from competing in international markets. When prices for food plummet as a result, local farms fail and are replaced by giant agribusinesses, and poverty increases.
  • The bill does not support cultivation of fruits and vegetables, and instead promotes an economy that encourages cheap calories and drives up the price of nutritious foods, aggravating obesity and other health problems.
  • The bill encourages production of sugar and corn to be used for ethanol, which Greens call an inefficient replacement for fossil fuels; the rise in ethanol-based energy has converted land that could be used for food production into a source of fuel. This conversion has caused economic and food supply crises in several African countries, as agricultural land now benefits the high energy-consumption demands of the US and other western nations.
  • The richest 5% of US farm owners would win more than half of the bill’s federal subsidies. Black farmers complain that they would be excluded from the subsidies program.

Bush Veto Is Agreeable

President Bush promises to veto the five-year, $300 billion farm bill before Congress this week. The House and Senate have given him plenty of reasons to do so. The bill is so wrongheaded it’s the equivalent of beating swords into plowshares at the outbreak of a war that closely follows a bumper crop.

The bill enjoys broad support in both the House and Senate, where even free-market conservatives hypocritically vote to spare growers of food and fiber from the uncertainties of supply and demand. The bill would pay generous subsidies to farmers no matter how much or little they harvested.

U.S. crop subsidies hurt developing countries two ways at once. They discourage domestic food production and contribute to the high cost of imports. Result: more poverty, hunger and all the attendant social ills, not to mention riots and unrest. It reflects poorly on a Congress that could inflict such harm so blithely, with so little lost sleep.

Not only would the bill do nothing to ease global hunger, it does much to aggravate the crisis. The bill reported out by the conference committee rejects a needed increase in the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program; instead, it would cut money from the program. Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass. (no relation to former Sen. George McGovern), predicted that some poor countries would have to cease offering food to children as an incentive to go to school.

The final version of the bill retains the prohibition against buying food abroad, where it would be nearer to famine-stricken populations. This increases the cost and carbon footprint of food transportation and delays receipt of emergency supplies.

I would agree on the veto from Bush. This bill has enough earmarks to choke a horse. I do see where this bill will do that much to eliminate the hunger of the US and the world.  I know moist who know me are taking aback…that I would say anything good about the Prez….but on this bill, for now, I will agree on his action.