When Push Comes to Shove

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The farm lobbyists who besieged Capitol Hill offices and the grain-belt Senators who staged a protest near the White House won their battle last week. The Republican-controlled Senate buckled under the pressure and joined the Democrat-controlled House in passing expensive credit-relief packages for farmers. Reagan aides, calling the fight a "sign of things to come," predicted a presidential veto. Said White House Spokesman Larry Speakes: "The President is going to have his pencil sharp as far as any budget-busting bill is concerned."

The drama was played against a background chorus of anguish from farmers. Rural politicians, representatives of agriculture organizations and even individual growers and dairymen wandered through the Capitol to plead for emergency assistance. The 105-member South Dakota legislature voted itself a special $95,000 appropriation to fly to Washington en masse for a day of lobbying. In Ames, Iowa, 15,000 people, many wearing bright green FARM CRISIS ribbons, jammed a midweek protest rally at Iowa State University's Hilton Coliseum carrying signs reading FARMS, NOT ARMS and NO BILL, NO TILL. Back East, eight farm-state Senators led by Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin echoed their constituents with a demonstration of their own in Lafayette Park, across from the White House. Harkin had 250 white crosses planted to represent the approximate number of farms going out of business each day. "If this President thinks he can preside over the death of the family farm," he said, "it's not going to be a quiet funeral."

Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole, who had been trying to stall action on the farm-aid legislation, gave in and let it come to a vote. Eight Republican Senators, seven of them from the farm belt, broke ranks and joined the Democrats in approving $1.85 billion in additional loan guarantees to farmers, plus $100 million to help banks reduce interest rates for farmers in trouble. In a second, closer vote, the Senate agreed to advance farmers 50% of the price-support loans they normally get in the fall, after crops are harvested. An infuriated Pete Domenici of New Mexico, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, called the second bill a "giveaway" that will benefit wealthy farmers as much as those on the edge of bankruptcy. Both Senate measures were passed as amendments to a $175 million African famine relief bill. Democrats in the House, in the meantime, easily passed separate legislation to provide the 50% advance on price-support loans plus $3 billion in new loan guarantees.