Senate Approves Wide-Ranging Farm Legislation

Senate antagonists in a bitter farm income-subsidy dispute agreed Saturday on compromise spending cuts, ending a filibuster that had briefly blocked approval of a wide-ranging farm bill.

Weary, ill-tempered senators, reconvening hours after a marathon session that lasted until 3:44 a.m., voted 61 to 28 to send the bill on to a conference with the House.

The action brought to a climax weeks of heated debate and partisan maneuvers on an issue that Democrats hope will help them recapture control of the Senate in next year’s congressional elections.

“The bill has some good features and sound policy and some features that are not so good,” Agriculture Secretary John R. Block said. “It is more costly than I’d like to see,” he added without elaborating.

California’s senators split on the vote. Democrat Alan Cranston voted for the bill and Republican Pete Wilson voted against it.

The four-year, $117-billion Senate bill and a five-year, $141-billion House version approved last month would bust the congressional budget by more than $18 billion for fiscal 1986, 1987 and 1988. White House officials have indicated that President Reagan may demand several billion dollars in cuts.

Two-Year Freeze

The Senate approved the measure after Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) reached agreement with three farm-state Democrats who had begun a filibuster early Saturday. The compromise calls for slashing expensive income-subsidy payments to farmers after a two-year freeze.

Dole had backed only a one-year freeze, but Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), J. James Exon (D-Neb.) and John Melcher (D-Mont.) had sought a four-year freeze, arguing that their debt-ridden farmers could not sustain substantial income losses for the next several years.

The House bill calls for a five-year freeze, but a source said conferees in that chamber would probably accept a compromise that freezes subsidies for two years, then cuts them 5% a year thereafter.

Expensive, Controversial

Those subsidies, the most expensive and controversial of all farm programs, are paid to grain, cotton and rice farmers to make up the difference between the actual market prices they receive for their crops and higher “target prices” set by law.

The difference would amount to a relatively few billion dollars over the next several harvests. But, in the long run, a steady decline in income subsidies could save taxpayers many billions, analysts said.

Harkin and Exon, who represent states hardest hit by the worst rural crisis in six decades, said that their efforts had merely improved a bad bill.

“It is one-third better than the Republican bill they tried to ram down our throat yesterday,” Exon said, “but it falls far short of what we need to cope with the depression we have in the Farm Belt.”

Many senators were infuriated by the filibuster, which delayed trips back home for the Thanksgiving recess.

“This is an outrageous abuse of power . . . holding a gun on people who want to get back to their families,” Sen. Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.) said angrily. “Maybe what agriculture needs is a shaking out. . . . This is the biggest welfare program in America.”

Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.), in a blistering attack on Melcher that startled a chamberful of yawning, dozing senators, accused him of stalling every farm measure.

‘Leads to My Neighbor’

“Every time I look at the spoor on that trail, it leads to my neighbor from the north,” Simpson said of the Montana senator.

The agreement clearing the way for Senate passage also included a pledge to act Dec. 3 on legislation that would strengthen the troubled Farm Credit System and authorize backup federal aid. A similar bill to help the sprawling network of farm banks is pending in the House.

Would Reduce Prices

The Senate and House bills would reduce the minimum prices guaranteed by the government for various crops, expand soil conservation efforts, beef up export subsidies and reauthorize a host of other farm programs. The bills also would renew the $12-billion-a-year food stamp program.

In addition to income subsidies, at least two other major differences between the bills may snag conference negotiations.

One involves a House-passed plan to tax all dairy farmers and use the revenue to pay some farmers to cut production or slaughter entire herds. Although this is aimed at reducing enormous government-held surpluses of powdered milk, cheese and butter, the Administration complains that an accompanying increase in dairy price supports would encourage even more production and increase consumer prices.

Gradual Reduction Sought

The Senate bill calls for a gradual reduction in dairy price supports beginning in 1987.

Conferees also must deal with a controversial Senate plan to let wheat farmers vote on whether they want strict production controls in exchange for higher price supports. Under heavy Administration lobbying, the House stripped a similar provision from its bill.

Neither the House nor Senate legislation comes close to implementing sweeping cutbacks in crop price supports and direct income subsidies that Reagan had urged last January.