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(AP) - In Washington, it pays to read the fine print.
The Iraq funding bill is a perfect example, studded with provisions
to help dairy farmers, airlines, salmon fisherman and rural
counties hurt by cutbacks in federal logging.

      And that's just scratching the surface.

      Take dairy farmers, for example. They're receiving $1.2 billion
in help in the Iraq bill as lawmakers clear the way to renew a
subsidy program aimed at smaller milk producers.

Then there are airlines like Continental and American, who won a
last-minute battle with the White House over a plan that would
allow them to together reduce the contributions to their pension
plans by almost $2 billion over the next decade.

The language extending the Milk Income Loss Contract, or MILC
program, is just one of the provisions hitching a ride on the Iraq
measure that couldn't advance on their own. 

Taken together, they
generated lots of enthusiasm among House lawmakers, who approved
them by a 348-73 vote. The Senate cleared the war funding bill,
80-14.

      Powerful Democrats such as House Appropriations Committee
Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., used the war funding bill to shield
renewing the MILC program from opponents in western states.

      The program makes payments to farmers when milk prices drop. It
favors those from states where dairy herds tend to be smaller --
such as Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania -- since it
pays farmers only on the amount of milk produced by about 120 cows
in a year.

      Western states with their generally larger herds benefit far
less, so MILC has many opponents, too, such as Sen. Pete Domenici,
R-N.M.

      The 12-line MILC provision has its roots in a battle from two
years ago over extending the program, which expired briefly in
2005.

      Then, opponents such as Agriculture Committee Chairman Bob
Goodlatte, R-Va., grudgingly agreed to renew the program as part of
a broader deficit-reduction bill, but only after making sure it
wouldn't be factored into budget estimates allotting funds to
rewrite the farm bill this year. 

Goodlatte's move put the MILC
program at a disadvantage since it required lawmakers to cut other
popular farm programs in order to extend milk subsidies this year.

      The war funding bill fixes all that by adding $1.2 billion over
five years - violating the spirit of new pay-as-you-go rules
requiring increases to farm programs to be "paid for" by cuts
elsewhere - to the pot of money available for this year's rewrite
of farm programs.

      What is more, under arcane budget rules, that money is made
available only for the MILC program.

      "It makes my job a lot easier," said House Agriculture
Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn.

      The MILC provision is exactly the type of "excessive and
extraneous" provision opposed by the White House in earlier veto
threats. But President Bush is a fan of the program - or was in
2004 when he endorsed it at a campaign event in the swing state of
Wisconsin, which gets the biggest share of MILC payments.

The White House took a firmer - but losing - stand against
provisions aimed at helping American and Continental, looking for
flexibility in their pension plan contributions.

      But American and Continental were backed by Senate powerhouses
such as Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and No. 2 Democrat Dick
Durbin of Illinois, the two airlines were seeking relief comparable
to that awarded Northwest and Delta last year.

      The White House protested, administration officials said,
claiming the provision favoring American ran counter to an
agreement to keep wholly new material out of the bill. The
provision matched relief provided to Continental in an earlier,
vetoed version of the bill.

      The two companies, along with a few smaller airlines such as
Alaska Air, will be given leeway to reduce contributions to their
defined benefit pension plans by a combined total of $2 billion,
according to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.

The 250-plus page measure provided an engine to pull many other
provisions into law, including $60 million in help for salmon
fishermen, tribes and processors in California and Oregon that have
been harmed by lowered Klamath River flows that have wrecked salmon
runs.

Also in the Northwest, rural counties harmed by reduced revenues
from timber harvested on federal lands, won a one-year, $425
million extension of a federal payment program.


      The Wisconsin delegation, its power magnified by last year's
elections, orchestrated inclusion of a two-and-a-half year
extension of that state's popular SeniorCare prescription drug
program.
     

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The Iraq funding bill is studded with provisions
to help dairy farmers, airlines, salmon fisherman and rural counties hurt by cutbacks in federal logging.


Fine print in Iraq bill benefits Midwest dairy farmers

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