Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Farm Bill Update: Dorgan-Grassley Measure Doomed

Today the Senate is debating Senators Dorgan and Grassley's amendment to limit federal farm payments at $250,000 per farmer. Ken Cook reports that the amendment is going to fail because of the strong opposition and filibuster threat from Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln and because the amendment will be subjected to a super-majority vote threshold of 60 votes. There's no way 60 senators will vote for the amendment, so it's going down. I'm curious to see how many votes Dorgan and Grassley will win, and I hoping the number will exceed the 37 votes for the Lugar-Lautenberg amendment yesterday.

Speaking of Lugar-Lautenberg, Carolyn Lockhead has a good story in today's Chronicle about the vote yesterday. She tries to make sense of the disparate group of senators who supported the measure as well as explain why my Senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, supported the amendment.

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