Agriculture Disaster Assistance
On May 25, 2007, President Bush signed the emergency supplemental appropriations bill into law that contains the $3 billion agriculture disaster package. This package was championed by U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan to bring relief to family farmers and ranchers devastated by weather–related disasters.
President Bush has finally decided to do the right thing and help family farmers survive rather than put up roadblocks to help family farmers who are in need.
The disaster package will bring about $150 million in emergency assistance for producers in North Dakota.
As a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Dorgan secured the agriculture disaster package in the emergency supplemental appropriations bill.
He pushed for this agriculture disaster package to help family farmers and ranchers who have been hit by weather–related disasters in the last three years.
For the past two years, he has fought to help agricultural producers in North Dakota — and around the United States — recover from natural disasters.
At the start of the 110th Congress, Senator Dorgan introduced bipartisan legislation to reestablish a permanent agriculture disaster assistance program in the Farm Bill to ensure that family farmers and ranchers who are hit by weather–related disaster receive the help they need in a timely fashion.
To help farmers and ranchers that suffered weather–related disasters in 2005, 2006 and 2007, he worked with Senator Kent Conrad and others in constructing the agriculture disaster plan.
Senator Dorgan has steered an agriculture disaster package through the Appropriations Committee and the Senate twice before. Each time, House Republican leaders in the last Congress, acting at the behest of the President, blocked it.
