North Texas Food Bank

December 01, 2007

Congress bucks Bush administration food-aid plans

By Missy Ryan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration is expected to lose several pivotal battles over food aid in Congress as lawmakers finalize new legislation without measures officials argue are needed to deliver help quickly when hunger strikes.

Aid groups are watching closely as lawmakers prepare for what might be the last round of arm-twisting in the farm bill, the $286 billion package that will set farm subsidies, food stamps, and food-aid policy for the next five years.

So far, the administration has struck out on its repeated calls to loosen onerous rules that tie food assistance to U.S.-produced crops which are shipped, largely on U.S. vessels, to needy nations as far away as Bangladesh.

The administration's proposal would have allowed up to a quarter of the food used in U.S. assistance programs to be bought from producers overseas. But it has been a perpetual loser with the grain producers and shipping companies that have historically been instrumental in securing generous U.S. aid.

"It's another case of good policy getting rolled by vested interests," said Charles Uphaus, a food aid expert in Washington at Bread for the World, a Christian advocacy group.

The plan for local purchases was spurned by House and Senate lawmakers when they approved their respective blueprints for the farm bill last year.

It's also one more reason that President George W. Bush is threatening to veto the farm bill, which budget hawks say is long on spending and short on needed agriculture reform.

But with time growing short on the farm bill, aid groups and other onlookers expect only minor tinkering to the bill's food aid provisions when House and Senate lawmakers broker a compromise bill to be sent to Bush.

Aid workers likewise expect Congress to defy administration advice and carve out around $450 million a year from the main food aid budget for longer-term, nonemergency projects.

That set-aside for nonemergency aid would be in line with what the House passed in July, and would eat almost 40 percent of the overall emergency food aid budget.

COMPETING VISIONS FOR AID

Unlike emergency aid, the nonemergency programs channel commodity donations to aid groups, which sell the crops within poor countries to fund projects supporting more productive farms, improved nutrition, or better local sanitation.

According to Bob Zachritz, senior policy adviser at World Vision, an aid group that runs nonemergency food aid programs in more than 30 countries, the approach is based on the adage, "Do you give a person a fish or do you teach them to fish?"

He said the nonemergency programs, which have received about $350 million a year in recent years, can be more costly in the short run, but are ultimately more efficient because they can break the cycle of famine and food crises.

The programs are controversial in and out of government.

The administration warns the larger nonemergency set-aside would sap funds needed to respond quickly to acute food shortages and would endanger the lives of up to 8 million people in desperate places like Sudan.

Shortfalls in emergency funds, critics argue, force the government to run to Congress for extra money in a supplemental spending bill. But the glacial pace of business on Capitol Hill's has sometimes meant that aid arrives too late.

The Senate set aside $600 million for nonemergency aid in the farm bill it passed late last year. Emmy Simmons, an ex-U.S. Agency for International Development official, expects the compromise bill to come in closer to the House plan.

WHIPSAW RESPONSE

"If this goes into law, we're going to have five years of whipsaw humanitarian assistance," said Gawain Kripke, policy and research director at aid and advocacy group Oxfam America.

"People could die, and it's been treated like a game of chicken between Congress and the administration," he said.

Some expect lawmakers to bow to White House demands that administration officials be granted the ability to tap the nonemergency funds if dire emergencies arise and emergency aid has already been depleted.

The Senate farm bill contained no such waiver authority; the House-passed version did contain a waiver authority which critics call far too restrictive.

Conference negotiators for the farm bill have not yet been appointed, and it remains unclear how soon a final bill could land on Bush's desk.

House Agriculture Committee Collin Peterson said on Tuesday that lawmakers were aiming to have a bill signed as early as mid-February.

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