Pelosi Now "Not Happy" With Farm Subsidy Limits
She Praised 3 Weeks Ago
Mark Matthews at ABC 30, the network's affiliate in San Francisco, has been doing terrific work on the farm bill this year. Last night he got House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on camera saying she has "always wanted" a tougher limit on farm subsidies than the one she singled out for praise just weeks ago when it was included in the House-passed farm bill.
Before she became Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi opposed the big farm subsidies. After all, for the most part Bay Area growers have been left out of the big money that's gone to the Midwest and South.Today, Nancy Pelosi told us she's not happy with the new bill that allows subsidies to go farmers that make up to $1 million dollars a year.
Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House: "Well we're going to conference with that and hopefully we'll have a better number in conference I've always wanted a better number."
ABC7's Mark Matthews: "You still with a quarter million?"
Nancy Pelosi: "Well we'll see what the conference comes up with."
These are not comfortable questions for the speaker. She may be opposed to fat cat farmers getting government handouts, but now that she's Speaker Pelosi, she needs to keep those Midwest democrats happy. And nothing says happy like billions in government subsidies.
As we previously mulched this topic, up until now Speaker Pelosi has sung a completely different tune (make that aria)--of support--about the House bill's phoney payment limit reforms. In fact, she hailed the provisions as reforms even before they emerged from the agriculture committee, back in July. In doing so she dealt a crippling blow to reformers who have been working for years to bring about exactly the kind of sensible subsidy limits she supported in the past and now seems to be intimating she wants to see in the final bill. In the Mulch of July 23, we noted:
In a July 20 statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi endorsed the House Agriculture Committee’s farm bill, saying:“The farm bill represents a critical first step toward reform by eliminating payments to millionaires.”
That's been the topline message from the subsidy lobby on the farm bill reported from the House Agriculture Committee last week. If they can sell the bill on this talking point--and play take away on the characteristic of the subsidy system that is most politically vulnerable in farm country, on editorial pages, and with sentient taxpayers everywhere--then they can sell everything else that's bad about it.
Speaker Pelosi is helping them.
Today, for example, the House Democratic leadership circulated talking points to the caucus that featured this statement right up top:
The House Farm Bill, a true reform bill, would:
Impose real payment limitations that will crack down on subsidies, save more than a half billion dollars, and redirect funds to people who need it most: working family farmers and ranchers...[my emphasis]
Not only did the House Democratic leadership whip the committee bill in order to defeat the broad bi-partisan reform proposal introduced by Reps. Ron Kind (D-WI) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ). They also made sure a straight-up, bi-partisan payment limit amendment championed by Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Paul Ryan (R-WI) was rejected for floor consideration by the House Rules Committee (See the jump for Rep. Blumenauer's eloquently blunt July 26 floor statement about the leadership's scuttling of his payment limit reform amendment in the Rules Committee).
The House farm bill has been harshly criticized by editorial pages nationwide (partial tallies here and here), and almost all have singled out Speaker Pelosi, and rightly, for embracing the subsidy lobby's agenda and killing reform. Her hometown paper has delivered some of the hardest hits.
On the other hand, the Rice Federation, Cotton Council, and the rest of the subsidy establishment praised her farm bill leadership.
And why wouldn't they? By killing real reform in the House, Speaker Pelosi has only weakened the hand of reformers seeking tighter payment limits, and a fairer deal for small farmers and taxpayers, in the Senate.
So after doing so much to undermine reform during House consideration, when her influence was greatest, Speaker Pelosi seems to be telling Mark Matthews that she will somehow intervene in the legislative fray and get a "better number" on payment limits through the House-Senate conference committee.
How exactly is this going to work? How, for example, will Speaker Pelosi manage to negotiate a "better number" on payment limits in conference if the Senate comes in with a bogus payment limit package identical to the House version--or something even worse?
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?r110:3:./temp/~r110qQaT8M:e55606:
Congressional Record, page H8682
July 26, 2007
Mr. BLUMENAUER. I appreciate the gentleman's courtesy and his hard work.
I witnessed for several hours yesterday the great challenges the Rules Committee faced, but I must confess that this rule puts a lot of us in a very difficult position. I am disappointed, to say the least.
This is not just a farm bill; it's the most important rural economic development bill, the most important trade bill, the most important opportunity to broaden the benefits for family farmers and ranchers, and the most important environmental bill that we will vote on this year.
Sadly, I will say at least that leadership did allow the amendment that I'm pleased to work with my friend, Mr. Kind, Mr. Flake and Mr. Ryan, the Fair amendment, to at least be heard, but it's only going to be heard for 20 minutes a side. They refused to allow debate on specific areas of meaningful reform, like the legislation that I had proposed to cap at $250,000 an absolute limit. I think it's a serious miscalculation.
This bill deserves to be fully and fairly debated. Now, I almost said I fear that minority voices would be shut out. But it's not the minority of Americans who share the views and objectives that it's time for meaningful reform. Because of the complexity, the misinformation and the powerful special interests that are involved here, it means that this shot that we have, our one shot for the next 5 years, is critical.
Sadly, there is always an excuse to not do all that we can do. Coddling cotton multimillionaires while talking big and delivering modestly is a failure of political will.
I hope at least my colleagues will vote for the Fair amendment. And I hope that the debate, as it proceeds, will be administered as fairly and as openly as possible to allow as many voices to be heard as we can ask.
