Congress Leaders Seek Relief for Drought-Stricken Farmers

With apparent backing from the Reagan Administration, congressional leaders are preparing a relief package for drought-stricken farmers that calls for redirecting as much as $6 billion in income subsidies without adding to the federal deficit.

Word of the plan to convert subsidy savings from the drought into aid for drought victims followed a meeting Thursday between Agriculture Secretary Richard E. Lyng and farm-state governors and members of Congress.

“There’s no way that will be adequate,” Gov. George Sinner of hard-hit North Dakota said of the proposed drought aid. But he and other officials conceded that any legislative package that exceeded currently budgeted spending on agricultural programs would not be politically acceptable.

Although Congress and the Administration have cautiously awaited assessments of the lengthening drought before drawing up an income-protection plan, legislation appears to be on a fast track in both the House and the Senate.

Sources said the agriculture committees in both chambers hope to hammer out similar packages next week, sending a bill to President Reagan before Congress goes on vacation Aug. 12.

The thrust of the legislation is to provide relief aid from a $4-billion to $6-billion pool of subsidy money that will not be spent if drought-caused crop shortages continue driving up commodities prices.

Ordinarily, the government pays growers of corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, oats and barley a subsidy known as a “deficiency payment,” which makes up the difference between market prices and government-set “target prices.” But with market prices rising, it appears that deficiency payments will be low or non-existent by the time the fall harvest arrives.

Thus, the proposed relief package would use savings from regular subsidies to tide over devastated farmers until rains come again.

“There is a considerable consensus in the Administration and Congress to take the money that would have been expended in one way and give it to the farmers in another way,” a House Agriculture Committee aide said.

Sources said that legislation still being drafted would expand on a 1986 measure that paid $535 million to 180,000 victims of drought, floods and hail.