Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats put together an election-year farm bill designed to please everyone from farmers to environmentalists and anti-hunger advocates. Only it didn’t add up.
A $6 billion error by congressional budget analysts has sent Democrats scrambling to rewrite their plans for negotiating a final bill with the GOP-controlled House, and has left Republicans crowing that the Senate bill was phony all along.
The blunder, disclosed late last week, means that a Senate-passed overhaul of agriculture and nutrition programs exceeds a congressionally mandated spending limit by $6.1 billion, or about 8 percent. A House-passed bill complies with the cap.
"We’ve got to find a way to deal with it. I don’t have an answer," said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D. "There’s going to have to be give in a lot of places. That’s just the reality. That’s a lot of money, $6 billion."
Had the error been discovered before the Senate voted on the bill last month, its Democratic authors would have been forced to scale back the spending because Republicans easily could have blocked it on procedural votes.
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