WASHINGTON - Farmers and ranchers feeling the sting of extreme weather need a comprehensive disaster aid package and the new farm subsidy law should not be pared back to pay for it, the head of the largest U.S. farm group said on Wednesday. Drought has dried rangeland in the Plains and cut into the wheat crop. Hot, dry weather also has threatened the western Corn Belt while heavy rains have disrupted planting in the eastern Corn Belt.
The Bush administration has said disaster aid should come out of the $73.5 billion in additional spending authorized for agriculture through 2012, rather than spending still more money during a time of budget deficits. "We really think that a true emergency should have emergency funding" rather than needing an offset, said Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, the largest U.S. farm group.
"A true weather disaster is not different than fires in the forests out West or a hurricane," Stallman said during a telephone news conference.
The new $50.7 billion farm subsidy law "was not designed" to handle crop disasters, Stallman said, and the federally subsidized crop insurance program, despite expanded funding and a recent overhaul, "doesn't quite get there yet."
Some lawmakers are still angry over passage of the law, estimated to increase farm support spending by 67 percent. Texas Rep. Charles Stenholm, the Democratic leader on the House Agriculture Committee, told a sugar conference on Monday that a request for disaster aid might prompt Congress to reconsider its support for the farm program.
"A lot of...folks in the House of Representatives are going to take a look at that pot of money and say it can be better spent somewhere else," Stenholm said. Stallman said Congress "always wants to respond" to hardship, a factor which could help growers win aid. The approaching congressional elections also could be a factor, he said.
Control of both chambers of Congress was at stake in the November elections, which could make farmers a pivotal bloc. By some assessments, the most vulnerable Senate incumbents were from a half-dozen farm states - Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, Missouri, Arkansas and Georgia.:
