David Obey: “last year in the conference on the disaster supplemental, Senate conferees passed a provision extending the MILC program…”

“last year in the conference on the disaster supplemental, Senate conferees passed a provision extending the MILC program for 2 years, and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Sherwood) and I had lined up enough votes on the House side to accept that amendment. To prevent that from happening, the Republican chairman of the conference gaveled the meeting to a close, and we never met again on the subject. Despite the fact that the President had said in my hometown on that same day that he favored the extension of the MILC program, when my office called the White House asking him to intervene in order to get that conference reopened so that the MILC program could be extended, the White House declined. That program is now scheduled to expire at the end of this week. If that happens, we will have lost an important safety net for Wisconsin's family dairy farmers. I urge the House agriculture authorizing committee to immediately report out to this floor an action extending the MILC program so that we do not lose that vital program, and I urge the Republican leadership of the House to see to it that the committee does just that. ____________________”