Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) decided late Thursday against pushing for an amendment to the Senate budget resolution that would have capped farm program payments at some $250,000 per individual.

"Throughout this debate I have been hearing concerns from senators who were considering voting against my payment limits amendment simply because it was on a non-binding budget resolution," Grassley said in a statement released Thursday evening. "I don't want my colleagues to have any excuses to vote against good policy, so Senator Dorgan and I asked for the amendment to be pulled from consideration. Placing a hard cap on farm payments and getting rid of the loopholes that are being used to help big farms get even bigger remains a top priority for me as we begin debate on the farm bill and I'm confident we’ll have the votes to get it done."

Later, Grassley's spokeswoman Beth Pellett said that the senators thought they had enough votes to get the amendment passed, but that they didn't want opponents to use the budget issue as an excuse to vote against it later during the farm bill debate.

Earlier this week Grassley's proposed amendment drew criticism from Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss, the ranking Republican on the Senate Ag Committee.

"Any changes to current law will only accomplish taking away the certainty that agriculture producers and their bankers have been accustomed to over the life of the 2002 farm bill," Chambliss said. "Senator Grassley's amendment is not simply a budget-saving measure, but a complex issue that deserves thorough discussion when all of our farm policies are reviewed later on this year, not during the budget debate. The Grassley amendment clearly fails to recognize differences in commodities, regions, as well as agribusiness infrastructure."

Grassley has faced opposition from southern senators in both parties in previous efforts to get commodity program payments capped. The argument against capping payments in the budget resolution, Pellet said, is "actually very similar to the objection last time when Senator Chambliss made the argument that payment limits...belong on the farm bill."

Although Chambliss argues that the debate should be in the farm bill process, he and other Senators who represent cotton and rice growing regions have opposed payment limits in the past.

Privately, one ag lobbyist in Washington said that the real pressure on Grassley seemed to come from the Democratic leadership in the Senate, which may have been responding to opposition to payment limits from southern Democrats, including Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas.

Chris Thorne, spokesman for Senate Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND), said that he wasn't certain if Conrad specifically asked Grassley and Dorgan to withdraw the amendment. But Conrad is trying to get the budget resolution passed today, so he has been asking Senators not to add amendments that don't directly relate to the budget.