"It's not handouts we want; it's decent prices for our crops that we can depend on to at least cover our costs," said Henry Hill during a midday break from harvesting a few miles outside this northeastern Kansas town. "I think it's OK to get rid of subsidies if we can keep decent prices up there with some stability."
Hill and other farmers around here are in their fields during the harvest season from dawn until after dark. And so they have hardly had time to follow congressional wrangling over the farm crisis, including an agreement by House and Senate Republicans on Thursday to set aside nearly $4 billion to restore some of the subsidies removed when Republicans pushed through the market-oriented Freedom to Farm Act in 1996 when crop prices were high.
Democratic proposals are based on a major increase in price supports, which Republicans view as an attempt to repudiate the 1996 farm law that was supposed to end budget-busting farm subsidies forever.
The measure, Proposition 5, is officially titled the Tribal Government Gaming and Self-Sufficiency Act of 1998 and popularly called the "Indian gaming initiative." It pits 37 Native American tribes in California that run casinos against a coalition, bankrolled and led by Nevada casinos, that includes church groups, labor unions and Gov. Pete Wilson (R- Calif.).
Opponents say the measure on the Nov. 3 ballot would lead to proliferation of California gambling -a claim advanced in a gaudy commercial in which casinos sprout on every corner, culminating in a towering neon sign that proclaims, "Casino California." Mike Sloan, general counsel of Circus
Circus in Las Vegas and point man for the Nevada casinos, said in an interview that Proposition 5 is a wedge for "wholesale expansion of unregulated commercial gambling" in California.
Steve Glazer, a consultant for the Proposition 5 campaign, calls this claim a "bankrupt scare tactic."
The announcement came as the administration was preparing to deliver the final shipment of a 200,000-ton food commitment made last February.
That commitment as well as the new one are in response to a January appeal for help from the World Food Program, a U.N. agency. Food shortages have been rampant in North Korea in recent years as a result of drought, flood and mismanagement.
09-22-98
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