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TSCRA Daily News Update, May 22, 2008
The 2007 Farm Bill is NOT done yet The Senate voted, earlier today, 82-13, to override the President’s veto on the 2007 Farm Bill. However, due to a clerical error, Title III of the 2007 Farm Bill was left out of the versions that was signed by Speaker Pelosi and then vetoed by President Bush. This is the same version that was voted upon yesterday on the House Floor. Because of this error, the House will be revisiting the 2007 Farm Bill TODAY to try and correct the issue. Below is a summation of what we expect to happen today. First, the Parliamentarian has indicated that since the Senate has voted to override the Farm Bill, Congress has legally completed 14 of the 15 titles of the Farm Bill. However, procedural and constitutional questions were raised on the Floor during yesterday’s debate. To get the trade title back in the bill and remove any lingering concerns about possible court challenges the House is going to take various steps, including: ---Considering a rule allowing for suspensions to be considered today. ---It is likely that a new bill will come up under suspension that will contain all 15 titles of H.R. 2419 with no changes other than three technical items. 1) a slight change to the long title (to distinguish it from H.R. 2419), 2) a provision that deems the conference report of H.R. 2419 to be the legislative history of this new bill, and 3) a provision that nullifies the identical sections of H.R. 2419 upon adoption (to prevent doubled spending if the Senate overrides the veto and 14 titles are in law when this new bill is enacted). Other than that the Members will simply be redoing the farm bill to correct the error. ---Lastly, a new suspension will be offered to extend current law to June 6 to ensure that USDA can keep operating programs. This will be necessary in the event the Senate is unable to get unanimous consent to pass a duplicate of our new bill today and to give the President time to consider and probably veto the new bill either during the recess. That would mean another veto override vote shortly after the recess.
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