United States House passes one-week farm law extension

The House passed a one-week extension of the current farm law Wednesday to give conferees a few more days to negotiate a new five-year farm bill.

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin C. Peterson , D-Minn., said it’s likely the negotiators will need another one- or two-week extension to seal a deal and finish the paperwork on the legislation, which carries a 10-year $560 billion budget baseline but likely will total at least $10 billion more than that. The current law expires April 18.

But the Bush administration fired a warning shot at the House-Senate conferees, who have struggled for months to reach agreement on a new long-term farm bill.

“The president has stated that he does not intend on signing another short-term extension if Congress has not shown significant progress towards crafting a good farm bill that he can sign,” said an Agriculture Department spokesman. “It is up to the farm bill negotiators to demonstrate that progress is being made on legislation that provides real reform while using acceptable offsets to pay for any additional spending.”

Lawmakers are still trying to work out minor details in the farm policy provisions of the legislation and say they are close to completing that job. But they are still awaiting a final financing package from the Senate Finance Committee and House Ways and Means Committee that could pay for as much as $12.5 billion in new spending over the measure’s baseline.

Pay-as-you-go budget rules require Congress to offset any new spending with new tax revenue or spending cuts. The House and Senate committees have been at loggerheads over how much new spending they are prepared to offset, which priorities to approve and what offsets to include.