The following article is from RollCall.com:
by Ellyn Ferguson
The package worked out between Senate leaders and the White House to avert the fiscal cliff includes provisions to extend current farm law for the rest of fiscal 2013, avoiding a scenario that could lead to a doubling of milk prices.
The extension of programs in the 2008 farm law, which expired in September, represents a trimmed-down version of a plan proposed by Senate and House Agriculture committee leaders this weekend. Instead, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., offered a plan that would extend a dairy program that producers want to replace and would not include disaster assistance, according to a Senate aide.
The plan also would not fund energy provisions and other expired programs that were in the 2008 law (PL 110-246), the aide said, a decision that Senate Agriculture Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., called “absolutely outrageous.”
“Without consultation with me or the chairman in the House, we now have a partial extension,” she said in an angry speech on the Senate floor. “They not only do not extend all the titles, but they do not include critical disaster assistance.”
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Source: RollCall.com
Posted by Haylie Shipp
