Farm Aid

WASHINGTON -- With the deadline for finishing budget work fast approaching, the Republicans who control Congress are beginning to resemble a fly caught in a spider's web.The more they twist and turn and struggle to find an easy way out of a mess fraught with political peril, the more deeply they seem to become entangled.By yesterday, their options for making the budget pieces fit seemed to come down to denying billions of dollars to schools, farmers or the Pentagon -- or borrowing from Social Security.

WASHINGTON -- Defying the most serious veto threat since George W. Bush became president, the Senate passed an emergency spending bill yesterday that includes $14 billion more than the White House wanted. Much of the $109 billion total is designated for military operations in Iraq and hurricane relief on the Gulf Coast - $66 billion for the war and $29 billion for post-Katrina aid and repairs. The rest of the money, added incrementally as the Senate debated the bill over the past two weeks, is for programs that supporters say are crucial and critics deride as "pork."

BILLINGS, Mont. -- President Bush entered the home stretch of his re-election campaign yesterday, clawing state by state to catch up with Democrat Bill Clinton and finding no prize too small to fight for."Every nurse, every technician, every farmer, watch out -- he's coming after your wallet," Mr. Bush warned at a rally here yesterday, as he battled for South Dakota's three electoral votes. "Mr. and Mrs. America, don't let him do it."Mr. Bush also told the farming community audience of several thousand that after Mr. Clinton's recent visit to the state, the Arkansas governor said he wouldn't commit himself until after the election to a Clean Air Act waiver, which Mr. Bush already has granted for the use of ethanol fuel made from grain.

WASHINGTON -- In the frantic weeks before Bill Clinton's 1992 election as president, high-ranking career employees working on a politically sensitive program in the Agriculture Department were invited to contribute to a political action committee that was raising money for the Arkansas governor's White House bid.Among those involved with the PAC were then-Rep. Mike Espy, who later became agriculture secretary, and Grant B. Buntrock, a Democrat who would be Mr. Espy and Mr. Clinton's choice to head the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service (ASCS)

Ironmen Geraldo Rivera mercifully won't expose himself, as his autobiography promised, on tomorrow's show, in which he has fat extracted from his derriere and injected into his forehead. To smooth out that famously furrowed brow, of course.The procedure is done behind a banner -- held up by fellow ZTC chatterbox Joan Rivers -- but you can hear the patient howling in pain. The show airs locally at 11 a.m. on WMAR-TV (Channel 2).George, it's not Bush's yearCountry music star George Strait was named "George-of-the-Year" by a club of Georges that gets together every year around George Washington's birthday.

WASHINGTON -- Responding to strong domestic pressure to cut foreign assistance, the Clinton administration has cut nearly in half the nation's annual pledge of overseas food aid, which had remained unchanged for two decades.Noting that the developing world's food demands are rising every year, the 15-nation European Union has criticized the U.S. move, suggesting that the United States is breaking its international commitments.Administration officials confirmed last week that the United States had outlined plans to reduce its aid levels at a March 13 meeting of the Food Aid Convention, an organization of about 20 donor nations that includes Japan and the European Union.

TILLERY, N.C. - Matthew Grant came to this farming village on the banks of the Roanoke River in 1947 from nearby North Hampton County. He had a strong wife with him. He also had five babies, the old family Bible, and a bony mule. He was nickel-and-dime poor, but the federal government had helped him buy some land in an ambitious loan program to aid black farmers.He couldn't believe it when he looked across the vast landscape: Black farmers were everywhere. There was Leroy Harvey. There was Booker T. Marrow.

WASHINGTON -- Reports that B-2 Stealth bombers -- the world's most expensive airplanes -- aren't as stealthily radar-evading as once projected don't faze Representative Barney Frank."

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration unveiled a tightfisted 2002 budget yesterday that calls for spending cuts in 10 major agencies, including the Justice, Energy and Interior departments and the Environmental Protection Agency. The austere spending plan is needed, White House officials said, to counter what they described as a lack of fiscal discipline by Republicans and Democrats in Congress during the final years of the Clinton administration. "They were growing that budget just like a bidding contest," President Bush said at a campaign-style rally yesterday in Omaha, Neb. "Those days must end."

WASHINGTON -- Bill Clinton and Bob Dole argue about who can best lead the nation into the new millennium, but both are taking a pass on some of the toughest questions the next president will have to grapple with in preparing for that future.For example: How hard should old people be pushed into joining HMOs to reduce the costs of Medicare? Can the country afford to continue guaranteeing nursing home care through Medicaid for everyone whose money runs out? Is it time to start letting younger workers invest some of their Social Security tax money in private savings plans rather than just raising taxes or cutting benefits?