The House debated the Food and Farm Bill for a few hours today, with untold politicking away from the CSPAN cameras. There were a few notable events, such as the defeat of the Kind-Flake amendment (117 to 309), which would have redirected subsidy spending to conservation, non-commodity crops, nutrition and rural development. The Center for Rural Affairs was live blogging the debate; the last 15 or so short posts will give you a summary of what happened. The Associated Press also has a short run down of the day’s events.
The Democratic tax loophole-closing proposal, which I wrote about last night, has drastically changed the politics around the bill and certainly livened up the debate, causing near hysteria among the GOP House members and the Bush administration (the Agriculture Secretary and the Treasury Secretary both made strong statements opposing the loophole closure). Before the tax plan, the House leadership was probably counting on support from all of the rural legislators (regardless of party) and the non-rural legislators who hadn’t heard much from their constituents. The loss of a mass of urban Democratic representatives would have had little effect on the final result. But now it seems that Pelosi needs to get all of the Democrats to vote for the bill, as it’s highly unlikely that GOP members will vote for anything that changes tax laws in a way that might lead to higher payments from corporations.
Closing the tax loophole would raise about $4 billion over five years to help reduce hunger. For some perspective on that number, a tax break on repatriated overseas profits that was passed by the GOP controlled Congress and signed by President Bush, saved multinational corporations about $90 billion in avoided taxes between 2004 and 2006. It was supposed to create an amazing number of jobs and plenty of investment. The drug industry, however, showed its gratitude by laying off thousands of workers.
I presume that the Center for Rural Affairs will be live blogging tomorrow’s debate (and the final vote?). If you know of other live blogging sites, please let us know in the comments. For a live view of the debate, CSPAN will be airing (and streaming) the House proceedings starting at 9 AM Eastern time.
Food, Farming, & Food Politics events calendar
Humor:
July 27th, 2007 at 7:27 am
Yes, that was fascinating to watch. Reality TV in a truer sense. (Minor quibble: I’d say the $4 billion in tax law changes was for the purpose of increasing the budget for the whole Farm Bill, avoiding cuts and reforms to the major row-crop subsidies. The Agriculture Committee engages in a bit of marketing when it describes that funding increase as if it just supported the nutrition title).