Senate Panel Preps Risk Management Bill

March 2, 2000

The Senate Agriculture Committee meets this morning to work on a long-delayed bill designed to get more farmers to buy crop insurance and implement risk management practices. Barring last-minute compromises, it appears the session will be marked by contentious voting, something that rarely happens within the Senate panel.

A majority of Senators on the committee have co-sponsored a bill introduced by Sens. Pat Roberts (R-KS) and Bob Kerrey (D-NE), while others are supporting a competing approach by Chairman Richard Lugar (R-IN). The committee will be working from a Lugar vehicle that is presented as a "choice program" in which farmers would choose which approach they like.

The House last July passed a bill similar in many ways to the Roberts-Kerrey bill. Although the House voted for the bill without dissent, it has proven contentious in the Senate, and the Senate Agriculture Committee has had an unusually difficult time finding common ground.

A vote seems likely today on modified versions of the two competing bills. Earlier, Lugar promised that a vote would occur not later than March 8. Some farm groups and legislators fear the money to fund the bill – some $6 billion over four years – could be lost in budget politics as Congress draws up a new budget resolution. That is supposed to happen by April 15, but the House and Senate budget panels are reportedly far apart on spending cuts and other matters.