The Legislative Cycle--Payment Limitation--II

My previous post covered the creation of the idea of changing payment limitation rules and estimating the changes. At some point, perhaps, some of my former co-workers were consulted about the idea, or at least informed.

At this point the change has been included in presentations to OMB, approved, included in the budget, and now presented to Congress and the country. Now there become multiple threads to the story, with action occuring in the House Ag and Senate Ag committees, as well as in USDA with the attorneys in the Office of General Counsel and bureaucrats in FSA.

1 The most important is the political maneuvering over whether to support Bush's plan. The strength of the opposition on payment limitation appears to be in the Senate, because of the key positions of the senators from the south (bipartisan--Blanche Lincoln is part owner of a big rice plantation)

2 The lower-level action is among lawyers and bureaucrats. They have to draft legislative language changing the existing provisions of law. Current law dates back to 1985, although payment limitations have been in effect since 1970. 7 U.S.C. 1308 and 7 U.S.C. 1308-1 contain the existing law. This may be the point at which people start really to think through the idea. (Though it may have started earlier when the economists had to come up with a savings number.)

At this point the idea may be just: $250K per person, and no 2-entity rule (7 U.S.C. 1308-1(a)(1)). (I'll try to explain 2-entity rule as I go.) So the first crack at drafting might say just that:

"The total amount of the following gains and payments that a person may receive during a crop year may not exceed $250,000."

Note the draft has introduced complications--the $250K is a cap on payments from different programs, so there needs to be a list of what's included. Because current law provides individual limitations at lower levels for some of the programs, Congress will also have to decide whether to keep those limits. The second complication is the mention of "crop year"--that's a term that has to be defined. Fortunately it already is, based on past history. "Crop year" can lay a trap for the unwary and statistically naive. Bureaucracies also deal with calendar years and fiscal years and data can be reported based on any of them. The third complication is the definition of the term "person"--to which many more bytes will be devoted.