Spending Bill
Spending Bill. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture.
The omnibus spending bill that President Obama just signed to keep the government open for the rest of this fiscal year contains key funding for USDA farm, nutrition, trade and rural development programs. The trillion dollar-plus bill that helps prevent another government shutdown until at least October 1st continues major nutrition programs, includes a key policy on overseas food aid and boosts rural development. American Farm Bureau's RJ Karney...
KARNEY: Rural development was a big winner within this appropriations bill. There was $180-million dollar increase in funding for USDA Rural Development and that increase went towards Rural Housing Insurance Fund, the Rural Business Cooperative Service and also telecommunication and electrification loads.
And the rationale...
KARNEY: Try to really build up rural prosperous communities and they need to have economic development go back into rural communities so we can sort of stop this exodus of creating ghost towns and not having the younger generation come back to rural communities.
On foreign aid...
KARNEY: The administration was requesting that the Food for Peace program change to a monetary program and also it wanted to move the jurisdiction from USDA to USAid and the appropriations bill did not allow that to occur.
That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.
