Sen. Johnson calls Republicans obstructionists
Regarding what's good for South Dakota, Sen. Tim Johnson hung the ominous obstructionist label squarely on the Republican Party Tuesday night.
An "obstructionist" is what the GOP labeled Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., after the Senate majority leader held up the president's economic stimulus package late last year. The Aberdeen native felt it favored big businesses, not rural America. On Tuesday, Johnson said the best economic stimulus package Congress could offer the country is a new farm bill. But Republicans have been holding up the farm bill for months now. Although Congress is not in session, Senate and House leaders are now trying to work out out the numerous differences between their two bills.
Johnson said the bill should have been passed last year and that Republican leaders, taking guidance from the president and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, used a filibuster to hold it up. They're the obstructionists, not Daschle, the senator said.
Before an audience of more than 225 people at a potluck at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post, Johnson methodically laid out what he sees as advantages to the Senate version of the farm bill:
* It increases commodity loan rates for farmers, while the House version maintains current rates. Johnson said the USDA favors lowering rates.
* It caps yearly payments to individual farms at $275,000 while the House cap is $550,000. The higher cap only benefits wealthy cotton and rice farmers in the South, according to the senator.
* It contains conservation and wetlands programs popular in the Midwest that the House version lacks, he said.
* It includes disaster aid for 2001 crops, more for value-added grants and a counter-cyclical income support program for dairy farmers.
Johnson also touted his two amendments to the farm bill. One would require that all imported beef, pork, lamb and farm-raised fish have country-of-origin labels on them. The other would prevent large meatpackers from owning livestock more than 14 days before slaughter. Such provisions are not in the House bill.
"We don't have anybody looking out for us, as far as I can tell, in the House," Johnson said, taking a not-so-subtle jab at Rep. John Thune, R-S.D., his opponent in the November election. "I'm standing up in the U.S. Senate."
Johnson said he's been fighting for a ban on packer ownership for years and taking plenty of heat for it. Thune recently proposed a similar measure in the House, but "absolutely nothing" has come of it, Johnson said.
"That was a political fig leaf for John," he added.
Johnson is also miffed that while the House farm bill requires fruits and vegetables to require country-of-origin labels, it doesn't do the same of meats.
But Johnson knows his amendments will have a tough go in the conference committee. Republican House leaders are looking out for meatpacking giants. They don't even want to discuss the merits of his amendments, he said.
Luckily for Johnson, Doug Sombke does. The rural Conde farmer didn't only talk about Johnson's farm bill amendments, but he told the crowd how the senator helped get his name off a federal black list. Farmers and ranchers whose names are on federal black lists can't get crop insurance, federal loans, subsidies or even their income tax refunds. Sombke said his name made its way on to such a list because a mistake was made while he was switching insurance agents.
Sombke said he "slipped through the cracks" during the process much the way agriculture is now "slipping through the cracks" at the federal level.
Johnson is in the midst of a five-day, 18-stop campaign swing to formally announce his Senate candidacy.:
