Congressional Critics Call It ‘Too Little, Too Late’ : White House Orders Aid for Seared Southeast

The Reagan Administration, under growing pressure from Congress to aid the drought-stricken Southeast, on Friday announced an emergency aid package of cash and grain subsidies for farmers whose crops and livestock have been ravaged by weeks of dry, scorching weather.

The aid was announced by Agriculture Secretary Richard E. Lyng just hours before the Senate endorsed its own relief package and two days after approval of a similar legislative rescue plan by the Democratic-controlled House Agriculture Committee.

Agriculture officials said their package will expedite relief to farmers who need it, but sponsors of the Senate legislation said the White House plan was “too little, too late” and insisted that the Administration acted only to head off congressional initiatives.

‘Over the Brink’

“The secretary of agriculture has fiddled while the Southeast has burned,” said Sen. Jim Sasser (D-Tenn.). “ . . . By dilly-dallying and delaying, I think the Administration has pushed a great many farmers over the brink.”

House Agriculture Committee Chairman E. (Kika) de la Garza (D-Tex.) welcomed the Lyng program but also said it was insufficient to meet the needs of farmers. “I wish this had been done earlier and I wish they had gone farther because the steps announced today still fall short of what many of us think can and should be done,” he said.

Under the Agriculture package, hard-hit farmers would become eligible for subsidies to defray up to half the cost of feed for their livestock and poultry. They would also become eligible for a total of up to $1.5 billion in compensation for lost or damaged crops.

189 Counties Designated

Lyng said he has designated 189 counties in Alabama, Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia for the emergency relief and said other areas “should be added soon.”

Agriculture Undersecretary Daniel G. Amstutz said the program provides an immediate boost to farmers who are running out of money to feed their livestock and poultry by paying some benefits to farmers in “generic certificates” which can be sold for cash or redeemed for surplus commodities. “We’re putting buying power into farmers’ and ranchers’ hands to go out and buy feed,” Amstutz said. “By putting these certificates out there, the flow, literally, is immediate.”

He said farmers could not afford to wait for passage of new laws by Congress.

Despite that assessment, lawmakers pressed ahead with their own expanded relief plans. On a voice vote, the Senate approved a proposal sponsored by Sasser and Tennessee Democrat Albert Gore Jr. that would require Lyng to help supply drought-stricken farmers with surplus feed.

Efforts Mandatory

The measure, similar to a proposal approved by De la Garza’s panel in the House Wednesday, would direct Lyng to underwrite the cost to affected farmers of hay and grain purchases. And it would also require the secretary to allow grazing on land otherwise set aside under government crop programs. Sponsors said the legislation would make relief efforts mandatory, while help would come at the discretion of the Administration under the plan offered by Lyng.

Opponents warned that the measure carried a heftier price tag than the Administration plan, but the Congressional Budget Office estimated the cost at around $300 million.

Although it is unclear whether the drought-relief amendment can become law in time to help farmers this year, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) said “it sends a signal” to the Administration that Congress demands action.

Linked to Election Year

Dole, himself from a farm state, initially opposed the measure as too expensive but quickly reversed himself when the depth of relief sentiment in the Senate became clear. Sasser suggested that the change of heart by the Republican leader was also linked to election year politics. He said Dole might be heeding a historical lesson that Sasser had learned from a law school professor: “The reason a dinosaur is extinct is it couldn’t turn around fast enough.”

Farmers in the Southeast have been increasingly critical of the Reagan Administration’s delay in responding to the crisis, raising hopes among Democrats that the disillusionment might rub off on Republican candidates at the polls this year.

“I’d never vote for President Reagan again,” fumed one south Georgia farmer whose drought losses are in the thousands of dollars.

Says Both Sides Working

George C. Graham, state GOP chairman in South Carolina, said both Republican and Democratic candidates in his state had been working hard to help bail out farmers and insisted there would be no “political fallout” from the issue.

But in Georgia, state Democratic Party Chairman John Henry Anderson predicted that controversy over Washington’s drought response would work against Sen. Mack Mattingly, the Republican incumbent who is up for reelection this year.

“People wonder why he isn’t sending some sort of relief for us down here,” he said. “Disaster loans we don’t need, because we can’t pay the loans we’ve already gotten in the past.

‘Why Not the Farmers?’

“If Republicans can vote aid for the contras (Nicaraguan rebels) , aid to Poland, why not to the U.S. farmers, the backbone of our economy? It’s just hard to see rescuing banks in Nicaragua and not saving farmers in Iowa or Georgia.”

The drought-relief amendment in the Senate was attached to unrelated legislation that would raise the federal debt ceiling by $244 billion, to $2.32 trillion. Because the legislation is considered vital--without it the federal government would run out of borrowing power and could not raise the cash it needs to continue operating past this month--senators have peppered it with riders addressing pet concerns.

Passage of the rider-laden bill is not expected until next week at the earliest, but Dole predicted a House-Senate conference committee would later strip off extraneous amendments before sending the measure to Reagan.

In debate Friday, for example, the Senate approved amendments that ranged from exempting from taxes the fishing income earned by Washington state’s Lummi Indians to preventing the District of Columbia from banning insurance discrimination against AIDS victims.

Staff writers David Treadwell in Atlanta and Karen Tumulty in Washington contributed to this story.