As it turns out, the farm subsidy bill that President Bush vetoed yesterday wasn’t the farm bill that Congress passed:
Lawmakers discovered Wednesday that one of the 14 titles of the bill (HR 2419) — the trade title that deals with foreign food aid, among other things — was inadvertently dropped from the version sent to President Bush. Bush vetoed the bill Wednesday and the House then voted, 316-108, to override, a tally that exceeded the needed two-thirds majority.
But that left lawmakers in a quandary about how to restore the missing title. Republicans questioned the constitutionality of a proposal to pass the dropped section separately, contending that it could open the entire farm bill to legal challenge.
After negotiations among top Democrats and Republicans and consultations with the House parliamentarian, Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer , D-Md., said the House would probably take up the full farm bill again Thursday under a new bill number, though it might just vote on the deleted title.
The Rules Committee agreed to allow a duplicate full farm bill to come to the floor under suspension of the rules. If the rule is adopted, no amendments or motions to recommit will be allowed.
Frolicking in other people’s money must be to congressweasels like catnip to a cat: it makes them goofy.
This would be funny if it didn’t hurt so much.
Technorati tags: Farm Subsidies, Politics.
Tags: farm subsidies, Politics
