09/30/99 / USA Today
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Showering favors on key lawmakers' states, congressional leaders on Thursday ended the impasse on a $8.7 billion farm-relief package without yielding to producers' demands that they ease the Cuban trade embargo.
The farm aid is included in an annual spending bill for the Agriculture Department that was cleared for action on the House and Senate floors as early as Friday.
It offers $7.5 billion for growers hurt by a second year of low market prices and $1.2 billion for farmers who lost crops to drought and floods. Moving separately through Congress is $500 million for hurricane-related farm losses in North Carolina.
"It's a good amount of money that we ought to go with quickly," said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.
The measure was stalled in a House-Senate negotiating committee for more than a week because GOP leaders refused to let it address the Cuba issue or any changes in new milk-pricing rules. They coaxed a majority of the panel's 28 members to endorse the bill without those provisions and finally secured the last two signatures Thursday afternoon.
"They were all over me to get this out of the station," said one of the two, Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., referring to the House leadership.
The price of the committee's approval was a variety of special provisions for the lawmakers' home-state farmers: $125 million in subsidies for dairy producers, a requirement that meatpackers start reporting the prices they pay for cattle and hogs, and a guarantee that livestock producers would get $200 million in drought aid.
The bill was expected to meet some opposition in the House and Senate.
"You have people who are upset about what's not in the bill and you have people who are upset about what's in," said Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas.
Some Eastern senators said that they were considering a filibuster because they felt the disaster relief was insufficient.
"All of us from the Northeast have voted (for) federal assistance for Florida hurricanes, California earthquakes, Oklahoma tornadoes, and now we have a genuine natural disaster in the Northeast and we're not getting the response we need," said Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J.
Both Democrats and Republicans were angry that GOP leaders prevented the committee from meeting and voting on the Cuba measure, which had passed the Senate, 70-28.
"The process was manipulated," complained Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo., the amendment's sponsor.
"Certain elements of the House are more concerned with continuing the Cold War than with helping our nation's farmers," said Jim Dornan, a spokesman for Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash. "But we will be back to fight this another day."
Some lawmakers from dairy states in the South and East wanted to use the must-pass spending bill to overturn a new nationwide milk-pricing system that was scheduled to take effect Friday. A federal judge on Tuesday postponed implementation of the plan.
Midwestern lawmakers, who support the new pricing system, successfully convinced GOP leaders to keep it out of the legislation.
The House Appropriations Committee may have eliminated some opposition to the bill by agreeing Thursday to put in another spending measure $508 million for crop and livestock losses in North Carolina due to Hurricane Floyd.
"This is just a down payment, but it will go a long way to meeting the staggering losses our farm families have suffered in the flood," said Rep. David Price, D-N.C.:
