Benefit for Ranchers Was Created to Help GOP Candidate

[Judi Lynn]

BIRTH OF A SUBSIDY
Benefit for Ranchers Was Created to Help GOP Candidate

By Dan Morgan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 18, 2006; Page A11

If not for a tight Senate race in South Dakota in 2002, there might have been no Livestock Compensation Program.

In August 2002, 12 weeks before the election, aides to the Republican candidate, then-Rep. John Thune, were worried about the political fallout from a speech made by President Bush during a visit to Mount Rushmore, with Thune in attendance. The president had pointedly refused to promise ranchers new large-scale federal drought relief, suggesting instead that Congress consider shifting some funds from a recently enacted farm bill.

The president's tough line undercut Thune's message that a GOP senator could get more done for the state during a Republican administration than could the Democratic incumbent, Tim Johnson.

Afterward, hundreds of disgruntled ranchers who had attended the president's speech headed for a Democratic rally in nearby Rapid City, where Johnson and Sen. Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), then Senate minority leader, lambasted the administration for letting South Dakota ranchers down.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/17/AR2006071701223.html