American Rivers * California Wilderness Coalition * Chesapeake Bay
Foundation * Defenders of Wildlife * Environmental Defense *
Environmental
Working Group * Friends of the Earth * Humane Society of the United
States
 * National Audubon Society * National Wildlife Federation * Sierra Club
*
                        Taxpayers for Common Sense

April 30, 2002

Support Motion to Recommit the Farm Bill to Keep Payment Limitations

Dear Representative:

The Farm Bill reported by the conference committee will be on the floor
this week.  We urge you to support a motion to recommit the bill to the
conference committee to follow the will of the House and accept
reasonable
payment limitations and boost conservation spending.

Just two weeks ago, the House voted 265-158 to instruct conferees to
accept
reasonable limits in the Senate bill on farm subsidies to large farms
and
to use the savings to increase funding for conservation.  Despite this
instruction, the final conference report, in effect, maintains unlimited

payments.  It nominally establishes a $360,000 payment limit, but it
preserves loopholes such as the commodity "certificates," which are as
good
as cash and are not limited in any way.  The conference bill will mean
multi-million dollar payments to very large individual farms.

The conferees similarly ignored the instruction by the House to boost
spending for conservation.  They have done so in part by delaying many
of
the increases in conservation spending, so that much of the
"theoretical"
spending does not occur during the six-year life of the bill.   As a
result, conservation spending during the six-year life of the bill does
not
boost House spending on conservation as instructed but is actually
modestly
less than the per year spending in the House bill.   (By contrast, new
commodity spending is heavily front-loaded.)  Meanwhile, the conference
bill also increased the portion of this spending devoted to the largest
factory farms by boosting payment levels for these farms from $200,000
in
the House bill to $450,000.

The payment limitation would help address the inequitable concentration
of
farm payments in the hands of tiny fraction of the nation's very largest

farms.  Today, 3% of the farms receive two-thirds of all commodity
subsidies.   The savings of a payment cap would be used to increase
conservation payments that benefit all farmers and all regions.

Both by ignoring the payment limitation instruction and failing to boost

real conservation spending, the conferees have ignored the views
expressed
by the majority of the House and Senate.  It is likely that a motion to
recommit will instruct the conference to follow the earlier instructions
of
the House, and we urge you to support it.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
For SC email list T-and-C, send: GET TERMS-AND-CONDITIONS.CURRENT
to [log in to unmask]