Senate panel approves agriculture spending bill

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday approved a $75 billion fiscal year 2001 agriculture spending package, as well as language that would lift unilateral food and medicine sanctions against several rogue and enemy states, such as Cuba and Libya.

In addition, the panel tacked on to the agriculture bill a $2.2 billion disaster-relief and non-defense emergencies package to accommodate President Clinton's fiscal 2000 supplemental spending request, though details on how that package breaks down were not immediately available.

Rather than consider a free-standing bill, the panel is moving the traditional supplemental package through three separate fiscal 2001 spending bills. Other supplemental spending has been attached to the foreign operations and military construction spending bills.

The entire agriculture and disaster relief package was approved by a simple voice vote.

The most significant political development at the markup was the approval of the amendment offered by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., to lift current unilateral sanctions of food and medicine and to require congressional approval before such sanctions could ever be imposed again. Similar language is currently attached to the House agriculture spending bill, which goes to a full committee markup on Wednesday.

The approval of such language will doubtless draw the ire of the Clinton administration and Republican Party conservatives, who support sanctions, particularly those against Cuban President Fidel Castro. Such opposition has kept similar language from being signed into law the past several years, despite growing congressional support to lift the sanctions.

The only senator to speak against the amendment at the Appropriations Committee was Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., who said the panel should not be legislating a matter typically reserved for other committees. Dorgan countered that the Foreign Relations Committee has already approved similar legislation but it has since been bottled up in the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.

"This is the only way to get this all the way to the president's desk," Dorgan said.

Ranking Member Robert Byrd, D-W.Va, raised some objections to language in Dorgan's amendment designed to expedite consideration of proposed sanctions once the president presents them to Congress. Byrd said the amendment would rewrite current rules governing procedure in the Senate.

But Dorgan said such rules were necessary to keep a presidential request for sanctions from being blocked in the Senate. Byrd offered a substitute to strike the new procedural rules and instead allow the Senate to simply expedite consideration of proposed sanctions, under the rationale that specific rules would be decided later. After some haggling, Dorgan acquiesced and Byrd's amendment was approved by unanimous consent. Dorgan's underlying amendment was then approved on a voice vote.

In another controversy, Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., attempted to strike from the bill language that would cut off funds for the Justice Department's ongoing lawsuit against the tobacco industry.

Full Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said the language was needed to prevent the Justice Department from appropriating funds set aside for other federal agencies. He said the fund from which the department was taking money for the lawsuit was a special "defense" fund to be used for lawsuits against the federal government, not for prosecuting private companies. If the Justice Department wants to go after the tobacco industry, it should be using its own funds, Stevens contended.

But Hollings and other Democrats said the language was a back-door way to protect the tobacco industry from another massive settlement, like the one that provided more than $200 billion to states to recoup losses from lung cancer and other ailments attributed to smoking tobacco.

Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., likened the vote on the Hollings amendment as a vote on whether the U.S. government should continue pursuing claims against tobacco companies or whether it should "insulate" an entity from lawsuits. But along strict party lines, the Hollings amendment failed, on a vote of 11 ayes and 14 nays.

The panel accepted by unanimous consent an amendment, sponsored by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, to the supplemental portion of the bill that would add $10 million in emergency funds to clean up methamphetamine labs, as well as another $15 million for the Health Care Financing Administration to educate hospitals on Medicare billing and coding questions.

The panel also adopted by unanimous consent two manager's amendments, offered by Stevens and Agriculture Subcommittee Chairman Thad Conchran, R-Miss., adding report language and various technical amendments to the supplemental and agriculture portions of the legislation.

Overall, the agriculture spending bill would provide some $14.85 billion in discretionary fiscal 2001 spending -- about $200 million below current year levels and about $667 million below the president's request. Total spending in the bill, which includes mandatory agriculture and food-assistance programs, amounts to about $75.3 billion, or about $1.5 billion below the request.

Among the agriculture bill's major accounts are:

• $828 million for the Farm Service Agency, up $33.9 million from fiscal 2000 and the same as the president's request.
• $3.1 billion in authorized loan levels for agriculture credit programs for farmers, the same as current year funds.
• $678 million for the Food Safety and Inspection Service, an increase of $29 million over current year funds.
• $871.6 million for the Agricultural Research Service.
• $964.8 million for the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service.
• $867.6 million for the various conservation programs under the Agriculture Department, an increase of $63.4 million over fiscal 2000. .
• $714 million for the conservations account at the National Resources Conservation Service.
• $4.564 billion for rural housing loan authorizations.
• $680 million for rural rent assistance, $40 million more than the current year and the same as the president's request.
• $749.3 million for the Rural Community Advancement Program, some $55.7 million above current year funds.
• $9.54 billion for child nutrition programs.
• $21.2 billion for food stamps.
• $4.052 billion for the WIC program, an increase of $20 million over the current year.
• $117.7 million for the Foreign Agricultural Service.
• $1.067 billion for the Food and Drug Administration.