By Catharine Richert, CQ Staff

Final talks on the farm bill began weeks ago with optimism, but the process is now trying the patience of some lawmakers.

Even if negotiators meet a deadline on Friday, there is no guarantee their work will be finished, given uncertainty over how the Bush administration will respond.

Senate Agriculture Chairman Tom Harkin , D-Iowa, called recent talks with the White House “frustrating.” The panel’s ranking Republican, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, likewise frowned and said negotiators “still have a long way to go” after he left a meeting with Agriculture Department officials.

The mood is quite different from a few weeks ago, when farm-state lawmakers were hopeful a breakthrough was close at hand. Since then, members of the tax and farm panels in both chambers have been trying to come up with a new funding mechanism for the measure (HR 2419). Under pay-as-you-go rules, any new spending must be offset by new tax revenue or funding cuts.

Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid , D-Nev., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., asked the negotiators to find a way, by Friday, to offset about $10 billion in extra spending. But even if lawmakers — ­particularly the leaders of the Senate Finance and the House Ways and Means committees — meet that deadline, there is no guarantee the White House will buy into the plan. “They muse about this, they muse about that, but they don’t put anything on the table,” Harkin said of administration officials.

Negotiators for the Senate and House have proposed all manner of offsets, including one that would impose new taxes on foreign companies operating on American soil and another that would close loopholes in corporate tax shelters. The White House has rejected them all.

“They say they want a farm bill, but they won’t negotiate,” Harkin added, saying the Bush administration does not seem to want to spend any new money on agriculture programs.

Baseline Disconnect

The White House’s approach will not hold up against farmers, nutrition advocates and environmental groups looking to cash in on the reauthorization, lawmakers say.

The negotiators are working from a “baseline” figure of about $280 billion over five years. The overall funding number has been a sticking point since the start of the debate more than a year ago. The House bill included a tax revenue package that would pay for about $4 billion in extra spending, and the Senate bill authorized new tax revenue that would pay for about $8.5 billion over the baseline.

Some aides say that members in both chambers have discussed cutting a deal without White House consent, sending that product to the president and letting him veto it — a tactic that could score the Democrats some political points in an election year.

In the Senate, lawmakers have boasted that they have enough votes to defeat a presidential veto.

But overriding a veto in the House would be trickier. Republican lawmakers, opposed to the tax package attached to the House version of the bill, have said they would need to see better offsets for the bill first.

Some Democratic lawmakers — especially those who represent constituents reliant on food stamps, or progressives looking to cut farm subsidies in favor of conservation and alternative energy — would likely demand more nutrition funding in return for their support of the bill.

Final Pitches

In fact, as the farm bill enters its final days of negotiation, a few members have been making a final pitch to Pelosi to demand deeper cuts to farm payments.

“It’s been disheartening and disappointing seeing where these negotiations are heading,” said Rep. Ron Kind , D-Wis.

Kind indicated he’s hoping Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel , D-N.Y., will demand broader overhauls of farm programs in the final bill in return for finding scarce funding offsets to subsidize the measure.

Behind all the proposals, deals and closed-door discussions looms a March 15 deadline for finishing the measure. That’s when a three-month extension of current law (PL 110-161) expires, and members are facing the stark reality that they may have to pass another short-term extension — or punt the measure until next year.

“It’s gone on long enough,” said Harkin. “This thing has got to end.”

But for now, no one seems ready to give up entirely.