Dear Mr. Zellmer:
Thank you for contacting me about the 2007 Farm Bill (the Farm, Nutrition, and Bioenergy Act, H.R. 2419). It is good to hear from you, and I apologize for the delay in my response.
As you know, the U.S. House of Representatives recently considered the 2007 Farm Bill. The Farm Bill is a comprehensive piece of legislation which touches on a number of agriculture-related issues, including commodity price support programs, nutrition programs, alternative energy, and rural development.
After a considerable amount of deliberation in a conference committee, the House and Senate each passed a conference report that represented the resulting policy compromises. You may be interested to know that I joined my colleagues in the House of Representatives to pass this conference report by a vote of 318 to 106.
While I believe that the U.S. House of Representatives should have taken this opportunity to implement expansive agricultural policy reforms, I supported the conference report because it does contain some noteworthy improvements in the Farm Bill programs. The alternatives to reauthorizing the Farm Bill this year were to extend the previous version of the farm bill or to revert to regulations dating to the 1940s. In my view, neither of these alternatives are desirable or acceptable.
The aspects of the conference report that I strongly support include expanding and updating the Milk Income Loss Contract (MILC) program, and investments in nutrition programs that help 38 million American families afford healthy food. For the first time, the MILC program will include the cost of feeding dairy cows as a factor for triggering program payments, a relief for Wisconsin dairy farmers who face increasing costs of inputs. The nutrition title includes an additional $10 billion to expand food stamp eligibility and increase the minimum weekly benefit, as increase funding for many worthy programs such as food banks, food pantries, soup kitchens, and schools providing healthy snacks to students.