Democratic and Republican members of the Senate Finance Committee who are also farm bill conferees have agreed on a $12 billion package of farm bill offsets to offer the House and the Bush administration, a key Senate source said Wednesday.
The package would involve $8 billion in spending cuts and $4 billion in provisions that would increase revenue. House and Senate farm leaders and the Bush administration have agreed to a $10 billion increase over the farm bill baseline over 10 years and it is unclear how a $12 billion finance package would fit with that $10 billion plan.
The Bush administration has reacted positively to the spending cuts, but negatively to the revenue raisers, the source said. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., has been shown the package, but has not said whether he would support it, the source said. The package includes some of the offset proposals the Bush administration made in a letter to congressional farm bill leaders last weekend, but not the proposal to shorten the period that Medicare pays for oxygen equipment for seniors, the source said.
Senate Finance Committee ranking member Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, told Iowa reporters in a telephone conference call Tuesday that the Bush administration proposals to extend a web-based Supplementary Security Income Medicaid asset verification test, recovery of overpayment of unemployment benefits and modernization of Treasury cash investment practices were among Bush administration proposals under serious consideration.
Grassley also said the conflict over whether the Senate Finance Committee would control Conservation Reserve Program tax credits and the permanent agriculture disaster program if it provides money for those programs has not been resolved. House Agriculture Chairman Peterson has said he does not want any committee outside the agriculture committees to have jurisdiction over conservation programs, but Grassley said he does not want to "dictate" the rules for the CRP program. Grassley repeated previous statements that the Finance committee is going to extraordinary lengths to help the Agriculture committee and that he wants the committee to keep control of the money so that it does not become "a banking agency for other committees."DTNAg
