House overrides Bush’s veto of farm bill, again

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress on Wednesday moved toward enacting a $290 billion farm bill for a second time after a clerical error in the first bill threatened delivery of U.S. food aid abroad.

The House voted by a 317-109 margin — more than a two-thirds majority — to override President Bush’s veto of the legislation. Bush vetoed it for a second time earlier Wednesday.

The Senate also was expected to override the veto.

Most of the bill was enacted in May, when both the House and Senate easily overrode Bush’s first veto of the legislation. But 34 pages of the bill that would extend foreign aid programs were mistakenly missing from the parchment copy Congress sent to the White House, so that section has not yet become law.

To ensure the aid continues amid a global hunger crisis — and to prevent future legal challenges — Congress and Bush are again passing, vetoing and enacting the entire bill to provide farm subsidies, food stamps and other nutrition programs over the next five years.

The mistake delayed shipments of food to Ethiopia, Myanmar and Somalia, said Stephen Driesler, the U.S. Agency for International Development’s deputy assistant administrator for legislative and public affairs.

Bush contends the legislation, which extends agriculture and nutrition programs, is too expensive and too generous with subsidies for farmers. He opposed the legislation from the start and began threatening to veto it last July.

About two-thirds of the farm law pays for domestic nutrition programs such as food stamps, which will see increases of around $1 billion a year. About $40 billion is for farm subsidies, and almost $30 billion will go to farmers to protect environmentally sensitive farmland.