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BL: Senate Overrides Bush Veto of $289 Billion Farm Bill (Update1)

By Alan Bjerga

May 22 (Bloomberg) -- The Senate voted 82-13 to override President George W. Bush's veto of a five-year $289 billion farm bill, ignoring objections by some House members who say the measure is not the same one Congress approved a week ago.

The bill Bush vetoed, and the one approved today by the Senate, had been mistakenly sent to the White House without a section, or title, on trade policy. Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin said the original legislation does not have to be re-approved and re-submitted to the White House, as some House members argue, and that most of the bill is now law.

``I don't want there to be any doubt in anyone's mind,'' the Iowa Democrat said after the vote. ``Fourteen of the 15 titles of this bill are now the law of the land.''

The Senate vote was more than the two-thirds majority needed to overturn Bush's veto. The House, which yesterday voted 316-108 to override, earlier today re-approved the original bill, which sets U.S. agriculture policy and farm spending for the next five years. Harkin said the Senate may do the same in the next two weeks to resolve the dispute over the trade provisions.

`One More Chance'

Before the Senate vote, White House spokesman Dana Perino said Congress should rethink its position on the farm bill.

The clerical mistake ``gives them one more chance to take a look and think about how much they're asking taxpayers to spend at a time of record farm income,'' she told reporters.

The bill boosts food aid to the poor by more than $1 billion a year while keeping largely intact subsidy programs for growers of corn, soybeans and other crops that Bush said are too costly and distort trade.

The farm bill is politically popular because of its support for farmers and food aid. Assistance to poor families takes up about 74 percent of the spending authorized under the measure, according to House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson. Crop subsidies account for about 16 percent, he said.

Senator Judd Gregg, a Republican of New Hampshire, acknowledged that the bill offered too many attractive programs for many lawmakers to say no.

``The ag bill remains, in my humble opinion, a serious issue, but it obviously has the votes to go through here,'' Gregg told reporters before the vote.

Farm bills, passed about every five years, include guidelines for subsidy payments to farmers, conservation programs and food stamps for the poor.

Ethanol Credits

The bill reduces a tax credit for blenders of ethanol into gasoline from 51 cents to 45 cents a gallon. A surge in demand for ethanol made from corn has contributed to record prices for the grain.

Reducing the tax credit was favored by companies such as Pilgrim's Pride Corp., the largest U.S. poultry producer, and Tyson Foods Inc., the world's biggest meatpacker, which say subsidies for crop-based fuels push up the price of corn used primarily to feed livestock. The bill also extends a 54-cent-a- gallon tariff on imports of biofuels until 2012, including sugar-based ethanol from Brazil.

The plan lowers taxes for companies including Weyerhaeuser Co., North America's largest timber producer. It reauthorizes the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, ending the so-called ``Enron loophole'' by extending regulatory power over electronic trading on energy markets.

It also requires that beef, lamb, pork, chicken and goat meat, along with fruits and vegetables, peanuts and macadamia nuts, be labeled by country of origin.

Only one of Bush's 10 vetoes had been overridden before today. That was a water-resources bill in November.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alan Bjerga in Washington at [e-mail].
Last Updated: May 22, 2008 16:54 EDT