Senate approves Agriculture measure, appoints conferees

The Senate on Tuesday approved the fiscal 2010 Agriculture Appropriations bill after approving an amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to add $350 million to the legislation to increase dairy support prices.

The bill was approved 80-17 after the Senate passed the Sanders amendment by voice vote, following a roll call vote to waive budget rules for the proposal, which passed 60 to 37.

The Senate bill includes $23.7 billion in discretionary funding. It will ultimately be reconciled in a conference with the House, which passed a $22.9 billion fiscal 2010 Agriculture Appropriations bill in early July. The Senate named Appropriations Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., and the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee as conferees.

Before the vote on the amendment, Sanders argued that dairy farmers are in dire straits all over the country because milk prices are the lowest in four decades.

Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Sam Brownback, R-Kan., opposed the amendment and raised the point of order against it because it would put the bill over its fiscal 2010 spending cap.

The Senate also considered a proposal from Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., to limit discretionary spending to no more than 2 percent over the roughly $21 billion provided in fiscal 2009.

Under the Coburn motion to commit, which failed 65-32, the bill would be sent back to the Appropriations Committee, which would decide how to cut the discretionary spending in the bill, excluding direct food assistance programs, before sending it back to the Senate.

Coburn said the 2 percent increase is the same expected for family budgets.

"The reason for this motion to commit is ... a 15 percent increase in discretionary spending. That is entirely too much money," Coburn said. "I find it almost [elitist] that we will not relate to what ordinary families are going through."

Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Herb Kohl, D-Wis., conceded that the bill increases spending over last year, but said that 90 percent of the discretionary increase is for the special supplemental nutrition program for women, infants and children; food and drug safety; humanitarian food assistance; and humanitarian rental housing. "These four items are among the most important things that government does," Kohl said.

The Senate also rejected two other Coburn amendments, including a proposal to eliminate $4.9 million in funding in the bill for USDA digital TV signal conversion efforts that Coburn contended were duplicative. The amendment failed 60-37.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who opposed the amendment, said the funds are needed to help rural public television stations buy equipment to boost the digital signal and meet the federal mandate to provide over-the-air digital signals over rural areas.

Coburn argued there are two other federal programs that will provide funding for rural pubic broadcasting stations' "translators" and that the Obama administration has targeted the program for elimination.

The Senate also rejected, on a voice vote, a second amendment to cut $3 million for specialty cheeses in Vermont and Wisconsin.