By Ellen Nakashima and Michael Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, October 29, 2000; Page A05

President Clinton yesterday signed a nearly $80 billion agriculture bill that relaxes trade sanctions against Cuba and permits expanded importation of low-cost drugs despite Democratic complaints that Republicans had so diluted the measures that they were rendered largely symbolic.

The legislation, however, also contains election-year spending for farmers, including $3.5 billion of emergency assistance, that Clinton and many congressional Democrats found impossible to oppose. It also enables more low-income families to own a car and not lose food stamp eligibility, and increases the food stamp benefit for those with higher housing costs.

"I decided that on balance that this bill advances the interests of the American people," Clinton said. "That's why I signed it and that's how progress is made."

He noted that the increased food stamp provisions will help those families struggling to get off welfare.

"If we want people to get to work, they have to be able to get to work," Clinton said. "They shouldn't have to choose between a car they need to get to their jobs and the nutrition and shelter they need for their children."

The legislation also contains money to help rural and Native American communities, for instance, by expanding small businesses and creating new ones, opening health clinics and improving water systems.

But the drug reimportation measure, he said, is designed to placate the pharmaceutical industry.

"It says it allows the importation of lower-cost drugs," he said, "but leaves the power of deciding whether or not to import these drugs to the drug companies, meaning it will do nothing for seniors and others struggling to pay high prescription drug bills."

The bill also "purports" to allow the exportation of American products to Cuba, "yet makes it virtually impossible for family farmers to arrange the financing that enables such sales to take place," Clinton said.

It restricts American travel to the island, hampering efforts to foster people-to-people contact and bring reform to Cuba, he said, and prevents U.S. financing of Cuban purchases of food or medicine, a provision that analysts have said will prevent the cash-strapped Cuban government from buying.

The Cuban government is displeased with the travel restrictions and limits on financing, and has said it will buy nothing because of "discriminatory provisions."

Also yesterday, Clinton signed legislation aimed at combating domestic violence. The measure provides $3.3 billion over five years for a wide range of initiatives, including shelters for battered women and their children and training for police, prosecutors and judges.

In his weekly radio address, Clinton called domestic violence "the number one health risk for women between the ages of 15 and 44." Each year, nearly 900,000 women are victims of domestic violence and nearly one-third of the nation's female murder victims are killed by husbands, ex-husbands or boyfriends.

The legislation also includes new sanctions to combat the growing trade of people trafficking. About 1 million people worldwide are forced annually into becoming prostitutes, sweatshop workers, domestic laborers and farm hands. Of that number, some 50,000 are brought to the United States.

The new law provides for punishment of up to life imprisonment for traffickers, and requires convicted traffickers to forfeit their assets and make restitution to their victims. The law also gives victims better access to shelters, counseling and medical care.