Appropriations Conference Meets Tuesday

September 20, 1999

House and Senate negotiators are expected to meet Tuesday at 6 p.m. to begin the process of resolving differences on the 2000 funding bill for USDA. A controversial dairy bill, designed to formulate higher farm milk prices, could be up for floor debate in the House on Tuesday.

The conference committee likely will approve at least the $7.6 billion in emergency farm aid approved earlier by the Senate and could add to that total, perhaps with crop insurance or disaster aid funds. However, House Republican sources say it is unlikely the total price tag will exceed $8 billion.

However, the 6 p.m. meeting could be delayed by House floor action on legislation to override a USDA decision on milk marking order reform. Floor debate could begin about the same time on the bill to mandate a milk pricing option almost guaranteed to provide higher farm milk prices than the option included in USDA's final rule.

In addition, some dairy-state House and Senate members want to extend and expand interstate dairy compacts as part of the appropriations bill. At issue are the continuation of the Northeast Dairy Compact and authorization of a new compact to extend across the southern states. Midwest lawmakers hotly oppose those efforts.

Earlier partisan debates about how the emergency farm payments should be made could erupt again, but staff sources say the pressure is intense to complete the bill quickly so payments can be made in the next few weeks.

There also is the possibility that to avoid being accused of taking money from the Social Security trust fund, the conference will earmark some of the assistance for fiscal 1999 appropriations. In that way, the $14 billion 2000 surplus would not technically be exceeded by farm emergency spending. Much of that surplus already has been earmarked for emergency spending in other budget categories.