House Completes Budget, Senate May Stall

November 19, 1999

The House brought the first session of the 106^th Congress closer to an end Thursday by approving 296-135 a compromise final appropriations bill that includes farm disaster relief and two controversial dairy provisions. The dairy measures threatened to hold up Senate approval of the same bill.

Included in the bill was $576 million in additional emergency funding for farmers and guaranteed loan provisions for farmers that will allow for $2.5 billion in loans plus $198.6 million in direct assistance. But it was the dairy provisions that threatened to hold up the process in the Senate.

The bill calls for USDA to use a milk-pricing option favored by many producers but opposed by Upper Midwest producers and senators. The same senators also oppose a two-year extension of the Northeast Dairy Compact. The bill, however, did not include authorization for a southern compact that has been promoted by dairy producer interests across the southern tier of states.

Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) scheduled a vote for 1:01 a.m. Saturday, the earliest moment allowed under Senate rules, REUTERS reports, to cut off the filibuster organized by Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI) and including several other senators.

The REUTERS article quotes Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-NE) saying there was no compromise in sight. Lawmakers who support the compact had no reason to be conciliatory, he said. "They have a bird in the hand," he said.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS noted that Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) also had a bone to pick with congressional leaders and the White House over a court order he says would harm the coal industry in his state. President Clinton, the article says, especially irked Byrd for first supporting Byrd's proposal to overturn the court order, but then rejecting it under pressure from environmentalists.

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Larry Combest (R-TX) preferred to look ahead to 2000 when Congress returns for the second session. "There's a lot of work to be done," says Combest. "We're going to be looking at all aspects of federal agriculture policy from regulations to trade to creating a better safety net," a reference to revising the 1996 farm law.

"By working together with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and the administration, I'm confident that it will be a successful and productive year," he adds.

When finally passed, the bill will extend for two years the Northeast Dairy Compact, authorized in the 1996 farm bill and scheduled to expire when USDA implemented a reform of federal milk marketing orders. The reform, too, will be overturned, and in its place Congress will mandate a more modest set of changes called "Option 1A," which Secretary Glickman considered but rejected in favor of the more extensive revision that will now be thrown out. As a result, milk marketing orders will change relatively little - something that irks the Midwest Senators who continue to threaten the bill.

Producers this summer approved USDA's original marketing order reforms, but many producer groups said the vote meant little because the alternative would have been an end to marketing orders altogether. They continued to press for legislative action. Meanwhile, a Vermont judge blocked implementation of the reforms, an action which also had the effect of extending the Northeast Dairy Compact.

The marketing order provisions in the current spending bill are similar to legislation passed earlier in the year by the House of Representatives but never acted on by the Senate. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), among others, has predicted more Congressional focus on dairy law next year as well.

Click here to see the Provisions of Emergency Assistance for Agriculture Contained in Supplemental Appropriatons Bill.