Clinton Announces Wheat Buy,
Congress Promises Other Aid

WASHINGTON —(AP)— Citing a "dangerous moment" for hardpressed American farmers, President Clinton announced in his weekly Saturday radio address that the federal government will buy wheat worth $250 million to boost farmers' prices. The wheat will be donated as humanitarian relief in Sudan and elsewhere.

"With prices for many farm products plummeting, America's farm families face a crisis, and we have an obligation to help," Clinton said in his announcement.

Clinton said the government will purchase within days 80 million bushels of wheat, or about 2.5 million tons, which he said could lift prices as much as 13 cents a bushel. A bushel of wheat sells for about $2.75, down sharply this year as domestic supplies have soared and Asia's economic crisis has depressed important wheat export markets.

Clinton also urged Congress to take more action to help farmers. Among suggestions: expand eligibility for direct and guaranteed loans and help replenish the International Monetary Fund to stabilize Asian economies that are major markets for U.S. farmers.

Clinton said farm families across America are in trouble.

"Our farmers face a difficult and dangerous moment," the president said. "Many farm families have been pushed off their land, and many more could suffer the same fate unless our nation revives its commitment to helping farmers weather hard times."

It sounded like a veiled appeal to return to government-dictated farm policy, a reversal of course that most production agriculture groups oppose.

For their part, House Republicans say they will pass legislation before the August recess that could put $5.5 billion in the pockets of financially strapped farmers.

"We have a very genuine disaster that is building up," Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., told reporters Friday. "When you're faced with some of the conditions we see around the country, you have to be responsive."

In today's radio address, Clinton said he ordered Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman to use the 80 million bushels of wheat for a new food aid program for the neediest countries.

The GOP proposal would speed $5.5 billion to troubled farmers who want it by this October and still not break the government's upcoming budget.

Drafted by House Agriculture Committee Chairman Bob Smith, R-Ore., the bill would permit farmers to receive some or all of the "transition payments" they are already due in fiscal 1999, which begins Oct. 1. The payments, which are being used to gradually wean farmers off Depression-era subsidies by 2002, are normally paid first in December or January and again in September each year.

"We have an immediate problem today with cash flow," said Rep. John Thune, R-S.D. "The pulse gets weaker and weaker by the day in our part of the country."

Gingrich also tentatively endorsed the Democratic $500 million emergency aid package passed last week by the Senate, which is aimed at helping farmers who have suffered steep income losses due to low commodity prices and weather-related disasters over the past five years.

"We're going to look very favorably on any practical program which helps deal with the disasters," the speaker said.

All this activity comes as many farmers are enduring low prices for crops and livestock. The downturn comes two years after Republicans pushed through their "Freedom to Farm" law that is gradually withdrawing the price supports that once insulated agriculture from economic strife but also controlled planting decisions.

Gingrich defended the law Friday, placing blame on Asian financial troubles, farm subsidies in Europe and elsewhere, and unusually harsh weather in many parts of the country, including the northern Plains, Texas and the Southeast.

A return to old U.S. farm policy, the speaker said, "would re-establish a paperwork program of quotas and structures ... which would then dictate to farmers, in good years as well as bad, exactly what they could do as decided by some committee sitting in an office building in Washington, D.C."

Earlier in the week, Senate Republicans rejected a Democratic challenge to the "Freedom to Farm" law that would have raised government subsidies by $1.6 billion.

On a 56-43 vote, the Senate killed an amendment by Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., that would have removed caps imposed in 1996 on marketing loans that act as a floor price for grains and soybeans.

It also would have extended those loans by six months, allowing farmers to hold onto their crops longer in the hope that prices and their incomes will eventually rise. All 55 Republicans and Democrat Russell Feingold of Wisconsin voted to kill the proposal; Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, did not vote.

North Dakota Gov. Ed Schafer, who met with Republican congressional leaders Wednesday on farm policy matters, said the proposals were too costly and of dubious value.

"They are not workable," Schafer said. "There isn't $2 billion laying around in the streets of Washington to be put into these programs ... Trying to open up the farm bill, that's not going to be done."

Democrats argued it was only a one-year, modest attempt to deal with a "crisis" in which farmer income is dropping an estimated 13 percent this year. Republicans, however, said the proposal would do nothing to improve export demand for U.S. crops and would distort markets by encouraging large supplies in storage.

"This is not even a good quick fix," said Sen. Dick Lugar, R-Ind., chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. "It is a prescription for enormous difficulties."

Republicans urged that Congress leave intact the 1996 farm law that is gradually withdrawing government subsidies and has eliminated restrictions on what farmers can plant. It also is giving farmers a dwindling transition payment that has totaled some $17 billion since 1996.

GOP senators said the main reason farm prices are slumping is the financial crisis in Asia, which has triggered a drop in agricultural exports of $3.5 billion compared to what was projected this year. Aggressive trade policy and reform of U.S. sanctions that cut exports will do more for U.S. farmers in the long run, they said.

"We have to market, move and sell the grain and livestock," Lugar said. "Freedom to Farm is a package deal."