Vermonters, Midwesterners
Salute New National Dairy Program
In A ‘Milk Toast’

WASHINGTON (Wednesday) – Senator Patrick Leahy, Senator Jim Jeffords, and Congressman Bernie Sanders today clinked milk-filled glasses with Midwestern Senators Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) to toast the new National Dairy Program in the new Farm Bill. The Senators gathered in Leahy’s office, taking time out from the concluding hours of debate on the farm bill, as the Senate moved toward likely passage of the farm bill this afternoon.

The National Dairy Program will provide payments comparable to the Northeast Dairy Compact whenever the price for fluid milk falls below $16.94 per hundredweight on up to 2.4 million pounds of milk per producer annually. Payments will be made retroactively to Dec. 1, 2001, and continue through September 2005. The Vermont Congressional Delegation worked together to devise and advance the national dairy plan, and Senator Leahy – a conferee on the farm bill and the former chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee – headed efforts in the House-Senate conference on the bill to carry the plan over the goal line.

Click Here for a Fact Sheet on The National Dairy Program In the New Farm Bill