Reagan Signs History’s Most Costly Farm Bill

In sharp contrast to his veto of farm legislation last spring, President Reagan Monday signed the most expensive farm-aid bill in history, calling it “a step forward for American agriculture.”

The bill, whose three-year cost is estimated at $52 billion, is designed to wean farmers from costly price supports by substituting export subsidies and import quotas for wheat, sugar, dairy products and other staples.

Reagan warned that the protectionist measures “could well backfire on us” by hurting such sugar-producing nations as Canada and benefiting some hostile governments, including the Soviet Union. Because the legislation subsidizes the price of U.S. agricultural exports, the Soviet Union will be able to buy American grain at lower prices than are paid by American consumers.

Critical Senate Races

But, with farmers in desperate financial shape and federal farm policy likely to affect the outcome of several critical Senate races in 1986, Reagan could ill afford to wield his veto pen, as he did last March on an emergency farm credit bill.

“The farm bill of 1985 is not what we wanted,” Reagan said. “But, in government, you can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. You can’t let your desire for a superior product lead you to veto a bill that’s really pretty good.”

Reagan vowed to ask Congress next year for changes in farm policy and said the bill he signed “maintains costly and counterproductive government intervention in the dairy industry, encourages surplus production and mandates export subsidies which could well backfire on us . . . . And, ironically, it could actually provide taxpayer subsidies to our adversaries.”

A provision of the bill sponsored by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N. C.) would virtually bar Canada from selling sugar to the United States. Helms, observing that Canada imports some sugar from Cuba, said that U.S. purchases of Canadian sugar would allow Cuba to sell more sugar to Canada.

‘Can Live With Increase’

Reagan complained that Congress could have done more to hold down the cost of the bill, which is $2 billion larger than the Administration had said was acceptable. But, with the financial plight of farmers attracting national attention, he said he “can live with an increase of this particular amount.”

In a signing ceremony in the State Dining Room, Reagan said that it had taken “extraordinary hard work and cooperation, not to mention the tenacity of a mule,” to steer the compromise legislation through Congress over a period of months.

Credit System Bolstered

Reagan signed also a bill designed to strengthen the federal farm credit system and buy some time for the nation’s financially troubled farmers.

In addition, the President visited the Agriculture Department, where he spent 10 minutes answering questions transmitted to him by satellite from reporters around the country. Most of the questioners wondered whether the new laws would do much to relieve the farm crisis.

He said that, although expensive measures are necessary for the next few years, his ultimate goal is to “get farming more market-oriented and less of a heavy hand of government.” The new law, he said, will begin phasing out government subsidies in 1988.

Recalls Last Football Game

Reagan relied heavily on anecdotal material to defend the legislation. To a questioner from Jacksonville, Ill., Reagan recalled that he had played his last college football game there “on a very cold winter day with a frozen field. That isn’t a happy memory, particularly because we lost.”

In speaking of his interest in soil conservation, Reagan told of a set of photographs mailed to him by an Illinois farmer graphically depicting the destruction that can occur when preventive measures are not taken. He said he gave those pictures to Agriculture Secretary John R. Block and took obvious pleasure in the fact that they had spurred a provision in the bill to take 45 million acres of vulnerable land out of production for 10 to 15 years.