WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats are picking up the pieces after an embarrassing technical gaffe that delayed a triumphant rejection of President Bush's veto of a massive farm bill.
Members from both parties hoped to bring the $290 billion bill — which includes election-year subsidies for farmers and food stamps for the poor — back to their districts over Memorial Day. But that is looking less likely now that the legislation will have to be passed all over again due to a printing error.
The House on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly, 316-108, to override Bush's veto of the legislation earlier in the day.
The Senate had been expected to follow suit quickly, but action stalled after the discovery that a 34-page section of the legislation had been omitted from the printed bill sent to the White House. That means Bush vetoed a different bill from the one Congress passed, raising questions that the eventual law would be unconstitutional.
The White House seized on the error.
"Maybe it gives them one more chance to take a look and think about how much they're asking the taxpayers to spend at a time of record farm income," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. "I think what this clearly shows is that they can even screw up spending the taxpayers' money unwisely."
Democrats continued to operate in disarray Thursday as they tried to figure out how to solve the problem.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the two chambers "haven't totally worked out what we're going to do on the farm bill yet."
To avoid a partisan dustup, House Democrats said Wednesday night they would just pass the entire bill again and resend it to President Bush for a veto. But that plan appeared to be changing, as House Democrats said they will pass not only the entire bill again but also the dropped title, to give the Senate different options as to how to proceed.
Reid said the Senate would probably override the veto this afternoon, and may pass the section that was dropped separately.
"We have, under good legal precedent, going back to a case I understand in 1892 where something like this happened before, it is totally constitutional to do what we're planning to do," he said, without elaborating on the case.
Republicans continued to berate Democrats over the mistake.
"The House should not gloss over an incident of this magnitude," Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., said on the House floor. "It's a serious constitutional violation."
Lawmakers may also have to pass an extension of current farm law, which expires Friday.
Bush says the legislation is too expensive and would send too much government money to wealthy farmers. A bipartisan group of negotiators on the bill made small cuts to subsidies to appease the White House, but Bush said it wasn't enough.
The veto was the 10th of Bush's presidency, but Congress had overridden him only once before, on a water projects bill.
Congressional Republicans overwhelmingly abandoned Bush in voting to override the legislation Wednesday, overlooking its cost amid public concern about the weak economy and high gas and grocery prices. GOP lawmakers are anxious about their own prospects less than six months before Election Day.
About two-thirds of the bill would pay for nutrition programs such as food stamps, about $40 billion is for farm subsidies and another $30 billion would go to farmers to idle their land and for other environmental programs.
The farm bill also would:
_Boost nutrition programs by more than $10 billion over 10 years and expand a program to provide fresh fruits and vegetables to schoolchildren.
_Cut a per-gallon ethanol tax credit for refiners from 51 cents to 45 cents. The credit supports the blending of fuel with the corn-based additive. More money would go to cellulosic ethanol, made from plant matter.
_Require that meats and other fresh foods carry labels with their country of origin.
Speaking as the son of a small time farmer (who does not benefit from it in the least, I might add), this bill is absolute bullshit. Fuck, there are Congressmen who are directly paid from every single annual farm bill because they own farms; none of them are in any danger of going under, to put it lightly, and nor are the vast majority of the other beneficiaries.
Now, as the article notes there's a lot of other stuff tied into the farm bill, as there is on just about every other big bill that's essentially guaranteed passage (food stamps, school lunch programs, and so forth), but the primary purpose of the bill is a profligate waste of billions of the taxpayers' dollars.
Yes, that's what the article in the OP says. However, all Bush has to do is nothing; he can pocket veto the thing and the Memorial Day recess will come along before the requisite ten days have passed, preventing it from becoming law until the next session of Congress.
However, all Bush has to do is nothing; he can pocket veto the thing and the Memorial Day recess will come along before the requisite ten days have passed, preventing it from becoming law until the next session of Congress.