Herb Kohl: “Mr. President, today, I and others rise in opposition to the Northeast Interstate Dairy Compact. While we have only a…”

“Mr. President, today, I and others rise in opposition to the Northeast Interstate Dairy Compact. While we have only a short time to discuss this matter, I think that it is important to fully understand its ramifications--for farmers of other regions, for consumers in the Northeast, and for the principle of free trade within our country. As I have said before, it is difficult for me to stand here and oppose my friends from the Northeast in their efforts to help the dairy farmers of their region. But I feel that this is a very important issue, and that it is the wrong thing to do. The Northeast Interstate Dairy Compact is a regional compact unlike any we have seen before. It is an effort by six Northeastern States to wall themselves off from the rest of the Nation economically. The compact would bring about artificially increased milk prices in the Northeast, for the benefit of the farmers in those States, at the expense of that region's consumers, without regard to market forces. And it would do so by imposing a prohibitive compensatory payment scheme to prevent more reasonably priced milk from coming in from other regions. It is at its heart anticompetitive.”