‘We Can’t Bring the Rain but We Can Ease the Pain’ : Reagan Tours Drought Areas, Pledges Relief

DAVENPORT, Iowa — President Reagan toured the nation’s drought-plagued agricultural heartland Thursday and pledged support for legislation allowing farmers to write off government payments they have received in mistaken anticipation of bountiful crops and low prices.

“I’m determined to get relief to drought-stricken farms,” he said. “We can’t bring the rain but we can ease the pain.”

After several weeks of White House meetings that aides said have drawn Reagan’s attention as he recalled the impact of the drought of the 1930s on his home state of Illinois, the President’s visit to the Midwest brought him face-to-face for the first time with the devastation.

‘Time Has Run Out’

“For many farmers, time has run out. From Montana to Texas, from California to Georgia and right here in Illinois, farmers face the worst natural disaster since the dust bowl of the 1930s,” he told farmers invited to meet him at the DuQuoin, Ill., state fairgrounds.

The trip, including a helicopter tour of corn and soybean fields and a quick stop in a field of stunted corn dampened by the first measurable rain that has fallen in the area in more than a month, also provided a visual demonstration of concern on the part of the Administration at a time when the farm vote is considered up for grabs in the November election.

Reagan said Thursday that he is dispatching Agriculture Secretary Richard E. Lyng and other Administration officials to 10 farm states next week on a fact-finding trip likely to draw local news media coverage while national attention is focused on the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. Republicans have expressed concern that Vice President George Bush’s presidential campaign could be burdened by the political impact of the drought.

But, said Reagan in a speech in Davenport, “even in an election year, the drought is too big for partisanship. Politics must stop at the parched field’s edge.”

Asked earlier whether the damage could become a political issue, he told reporters: “I think they’d have difficulty saying I did anything to keep it from raining.”

Panel Backs Relief Bill

Forgiveness of “advanced deficiency payments” is one of the central elements of a farm relief bill approved Thursday by the Senate Agriculture Committee. These funds are advances on the government payments a farmer anticipates receiving after a harvest if crop prices do not reach a certain, guaranteed level. Those minimum levels are part of the longstanding government support program intended to protect farmers from the vagaries of the agricultural market.

Without such forgiveness, many farmers, although lacking crops, would be forced to return the advanced payments because the drought is driving average crop prices well above the established floor.

In addition to this relief, Reagan said that he favors unspecified assistance for farmers who have not received advanced payments and are suffering from the drought. At the same time, the President warned against using the emergency to tack amendments that have nothing to do with the current crisis onto the relief legislation.

“To try such a ploy would only delay the train that should be carrying help to farmers,” he said in a speech to the Quad Cities Chamber of Commerce here, where Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa, meet Moline and Rock Island, Ill., at the now drought-shriveled Mississippi River.

Examines Corn Field

In DuQuoin, Reagan visited the 2,700-acre farm where Herman Krone and his son, Rick, grow corn, soybeans and sorghum. He examined a field where the corn normally would be eight feet tall and later told about 200 invited farmers at the state fairgrounds that “it came up to here,” pounding himself with his left hand, just above his belly.

“What I saw was not a pretty sight--stunted corn, sparse bean fields, withered plants starved for water, struggling to push their way up,” said Reagan, who shed his suit jacket as the temperature headed well into the 90s. Wisps of clouds and a breeze that rippled through two nearby cottonwoods provided no relief.

Illinois is in the midst of what Larry Werries, the state director of agriculture, told Reagan was “the worst drought the state has ever known.”

“We’re really in a very desperate situation,” he said. “Most southern Illinois farmers are writing off the corn crop,” with yields ranging from zero to 30% of normal.

Reagan’s meeting with the farmers in DuQuoin in south-central Illinois provided a brief overview of the impact of the drought in the Midwest.

Gov. James R. Thompson of Illinois, who with Secretary Lyng accompanied Reagan, told the President that others, besides the farmers, are suffering.

‘Tiny Towns Affected’

“The tiny towns you saw will be affected. A farmer without cash in his pockets does not spend”--in agricultural supply stores, in food stores “and in the dime store,” the governor said.

The emergency efforts to cope with the devastation to the wide segments of the Farm Belt--in the Midwest, the Great Plains and the Southwest--clash with the President’s austerity program and his long campaign to wean American agriculture from its decades of reliance on federal assistance.

The emergency farm legislation passed Thursday by the Senate committee is intended to provide $5.5 billion in assistance to farmers suffering from the drought, so they can plant crops next year. The legislation, hammered out jointly by the Administration and Congress last week, would reimburse farmers for 65% of the return they had expected on crops that have been seriously damaged by the drought.

The House Agricultural Committee gave tentative approval Thursday to a similar bill, although the measure must be formally voted upon after differences over some details are thrashed out.

Up to $100,000 in Aid

Both the House and Senate versions would provide disaster-relief payments of up to $100,000 per farmer for crop losses stemming from the drought. They would, as Reagan proposed Thursday, excuse farmers who received price-support loans from having to repay them if their crops are ruined.

The legislation would also underwrite losses for owners of livestock herds and poultry farms, including for the first time livestock producers who do not ordinarily grow their own feed.

The relief is expected to be financed from savings in traditional federal farm-subsidy programs, whose cost is expected to decline dramatically because the government will not have to maintain price supports when market prices rise because of the drought. Floor action on both measures could come in August or September.

In a related development, the Army Corps of Engineers has rejected requests from Gov. Thompson and other officials for increased diversion of water from the Great Lakes into the drought-parched Mississippi River, an Army official said Thursday.

“We do not feel it is necessary to do it at this time,” said Robert Page, the Army’s assistant secretary for civil works, after testifying before the Senate merchant marine subcommittee in Washington.