House and Senate conferees have struck a long-awaited deal on the framework for a new farm bill, resolving key funding issues that had stalled progress for month.

The measure (HR 2419) will be total about $570 billion over 10 years, with new funding for farm-related tax credits, a disaster aid program, and food stamps.

Those enhancements will be paid for in part by a $400 million cut to direct payments, a subsidy farmers get based on their acreage and the type of crop they grow.

But most of the offsets for the extra spending will come from extending customs user fees paid by importers, a revenue-raiser favored by the Bush administration.

Nutrition programs would get a significant boost. Food stamps and food aid would top out at about $10.2 billion, up from an initial proposal of $9.5 billion.

“Today the principal farm bill negotiators came together on a bipartisan level to reach a tentative agreement on the agriculture policy that will make the final farm bill a strong one,” said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, chairman of the Agriculture Committee.

Over the weekend, lawmakers will continue their discussions about preventing very wealthy farmers from collecting government subsidies. The conferees say they will have a conference report ready for formal signatures by Monday, with House and Senate floor action to follow.

Negotiators worked on the measure most of Friday, particularly on the $10 billion in new spending.

The struggle to offset extra funding had stalled negotiators for months, as lawmakers sought to satisfy not only competing interests within Congress but also the White House.

With the conferees finally closing in on a deal, President Bush on Friday signed the latest short-term extension of current farm law (S 2903), which Congress cleared Thursday. It continues the 2002 farm law (PL 107-171) for another week.

It was not immediately clear whether the administration would bless the deal struck by leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture committees, the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee.

The White House had threatened to veto both the House bill, which was passed by 231-191 on July 27, 2007, and the Senate version, passed by 79-14 on Dec. 14.

Most House Republicans voted against the original House bill because it included tax increases — a prime reason for the White House veto threat. The final package appears to contain no provisions that could be viewed as tax increases.

Lawmakers on Thursday abandoned a plan to offset some of the bill’s costs with a change in tax law that would require stock brokers and mutual funds to report the cost basis of securities sold by their clients. The White House warned that Bush would veto the measure if it included the provision.

The administration has not objected to customs user fees to subsidize new farm spending.

House Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel, D-N.Y., for weeks opposed tapping the user fees, which he planned to use as offsets for other priorities, such as the renewal and expansion of Trade Adjustment Assistance programs for workers displaced by trade and globalization.

With a final deal in place, it’s possible that Rangel agreed to allow the farm bill to boost user fees in return for a promise that lawmakers would include a $150 million, two-year extension of the Caribbean Basin Initiative, a program that provides trade preferences for countries there.

The CBI is a priority that Rangel had reportedly envisioned paying for with user fees anyway; attaching it to the farm bill would be an easy way to fast-track the extension.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa., who is ranking member on the Finance Committee, confirmed that a CBI extension would be included in the final farm bill.

Negotiators indicated that the Senate Finance Committee has promised to help Rangel find other offsets for the TAA renewal, which Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., has prominently placed on his to-do list for this year.

Other elements of the package also were tweaked in the final negotiations; lawmakers pared $250 million from a $4 billion disaster-aid fund that Baucus and Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., had made a top priority. Still, inclusion of the fund was a victory for the Senate team, because the House bill had included no such provision.

First posted April 25, 2008 2:59 p.m.