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Senators Kohl, Klobuchar Go to Bat For Dairy Farmers Urging Bush to Protect MILC Program in Upcoming Budget

President will submit his budget to Congress next month

January 25, 2007

(Washington, D.C.) U.S. Senators Herb Kohl (D-WI) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) this week sent a letter to the President urging him to provide full funding for the continuation of the Milk Income Loss Contract (MILC) program in the Fiscal Year 2008 budget he will submit to Congress in February. Kohl and Klobuchar also pledged to work to ensure an extension of the MILC program as part of the 2007 Farm Bill. The MILC program provides counter-cyclical support for small and mid-sized dairy farmers when milk prices plummet.

Along with their colleague Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the Senators also weighed in against a tax on milk producers and an ill-conceived proposal to reduce benefits under the dairy price support programs that the President included in his budget last year, which neither the House or Senate ultimately supported.

“The MILC program is critically important to Minnesota’s dairy farmers, and it has helped to preserve Minnesota’s dairy operations in times of low prices,” said Klobuchar. “Family-owned dairy farms are part of Minnesota’s heritage, and they deserve the President’s support.”

Minnesota dairy producers have received more than $175 million and Wisconsin dairy producers have received more than $400 million since Congress implemented the program. MILC is one of many federal agriculture programs that will be revisited during the Farm Bill debate in Congress this year.

“MILC is no special interest handout – it is a national program inexorably linked to the health and vitality of our rural families and communities,” Kohl said. “MILC pays out only when prices drop precipitously low, it targets only small and mid-sized farms, and replaces only a percentage of the struggling farmers’ lost income. It has not just helped keep our family farms in business; it has helped the rural communities those farms support all over Wisconsin.”