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The recent $290 billion Farm Bill — now being re-submitted to the White House because of a misprint in the last one President Bush vetoed — left conservatives with a dilemma. The Heritage Foundation excoriated the bill, calling it “a bloated version of the status quo.”

But members of Bush’s own party supported the bill, in numbers high enough to achieve an override of that veto.

Congressman Louie Gohmert, R-Tyler, was one of them. Last week, I invited Gohmert to discuss his support for the bill.

“East Texas has endured two years of extreme drought which has been devastating to East Texas farmers and ranchers,” Gohmert responded. “For many of them, this was then followed by significant flooding. To make matters worse, the current spike in energy prices along with the bloated cost of corn due to increased ethanol production have dealt a severe blow to the agriculture industry.”

The Farm Bill includes help for those farmers and ranchers. Still, Gohmert says, the legislation was far from perfect.

“I am not particularly fond of subsidies at all, and some who are far too wealthy have received them,” Gohmert says. “However, the new Farm Bill actually moves in the right direction by substantially limiting the eligibility for receiving subsidies. In addition, it will keep some farmers and ranchers afloat after some disastrous years while allowing our domestic products to compete during critical times with subsidized products of other countries.”

Criticisms of the bill are valid, Gohmert acknowledges.

“Some conservative commentators were upset because the bill did not completely eliminate subsidies and had other elements some of us do not support,” he says. “But there were moderate Democrats like (Rep.) Collin Peterson (D-MN) who helped us get the major concessions which made this a better bill than most conservatives who were involved could expect in this political climate.”

The bill contains a key provision that Gohmert has been working on, he adds.

“Also in this Farm Bill, the timber tax reform provisions were finally addressed, which provide long awaited and drastically needed fairness to the vital timber industry in East Texas and across the nation,” Gohmert says. “I had been pushing for this in the last Congress and we were able to get it through the House, but Democratic opposition killed it in the Senate.”

He cites the example of the Abitibi paper mill in Lufkin, which closed recently.

“That was an intense blow to Angelina County and all of East Texas. One business in Longview reported to me that it lost nearly 10 percent of its business when the Lufkin plant closed,” Gohmert says. “East Texans are learning that if one place in East Texas gets hurt, most in East Texas are adversely affected.”

The Farm Bill will help, he adds.

“The passage of the timber tax reform within the Farm Bill will provide major stimulation to the industry,” he says. “These provisions will help ensure that we use our natural resources in a safe and sustainable way to produce American jobs and make Americans less dependent on foreign sources of basic materials.”

The current Farm Bill is also an improvement over the last attempt, Gohmert says.

“At the last minute, a $4 billion tax increase was added to last year’s version of the Farm Bill to help expand entitlement programs rather than aid farmers, and it would have violated more than 50 tax treaties, thereby threatening hundreds of thousands of jobs in Texas alone,” Gohmert notes. “For that and other good reasons, many of us revolted against it last year. Because these problems were fixed over the several months of committee negotiations, I felt the need to vote in favor of it. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the current Farm Bill we passed is fully paid for and funded in part by customer user fees. There will be no need to increase these fees and tax increases will not be used to pay for it either.” Still, it wasn’t an easy decision to buck Bush, he adds.

“Overall, after weighing these issues and others, and while tracking the progress of the Farm Bill from the previous forms to the present, it seemed clear that significant progress has been made and would be lost if not passed now,” Gohmert says. “Ultimately, this Farm Bill serves the best interest of East Texans. It is inevitable that a bill this large will and does have flaws, and I still had some concerns with certain provisions in the Farm Bill. However, the most disconcerting provisions within the bill were taken several steps in the right direction and provided marked and significant incremental reform.”

Early Returns is the political observations column of staff writer Roy Maynard, who can be reached at 903-596-6291 or at roymaynardtmt@gmail.com.