Scorecard: Americans for Democratic Action 2008 House Scorecard

Org. position: Aye

Description:

"Passage by required two-thirds majority, over President Bush's June 18, 2008 veto, of a bill to reauthorize Federal farm and nutrition programs for five years, including crop subsidies, food stamps, conservation, rural development, and agricultural trade programs. It would authorize a $10.4 billion increase for nutrition programs, offset by extending customs user fees. It would also cut direct payment subsidies by $313 million, partly by reducing the percentage of acres for which a farmer can collect those payments from 85 percent to 83.3 percent. Farmers making more than $750,000 a year in farm-related income and those with more than $500,000 a year in non-farm related income would not be eligible for subsidies. It would provide a $65,000 limit for counter-cyclical payments, authorize $1.3 billion to add new acreage in the Wetlands Reserve Program and reduce the Conservation Reserve Program to 32 million acres, and require country-of-origin labels for all meat by September 2008. It also would extend the Milk Income Loss Contract program through fiscal 2012 and provide a subsidy for the purchase of excess sugar in the U.S. market to make sugar-based ethanol."

(Original scorecard available at: http://www.adaction.org/pages/publications/voting-records.php)