Second Stimuls Guts Rural Micro Program
Aug 25th, 2008 | By Dawn R. Rivers | Category: Politics & PolicyWhen Congress finally got its act together to get a new Farm Bill to the President’s desk earlier this year, there was much cheer among rural development advocates, thanks to the mandatory funding for the new rural microenterprise development program written into the legislative language. That mandatory funding provision was important. Congress has a history of writing rural development programs into the Farm Bill and then gutting their funding when they think they need the money for something else.
But, in Washington, mandatory funding does not always mean mandatory funding. Earlier this month, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) submitted a supplemental budget request that was billed as an additional economic stimulus but that, ironically, guts the rural economic development funding from the Farm Bill. Evidently, the Bush Administration wants to use that money to pay for upgrading the USDA’s computers. It doesn’t look like the proposal will find much joy on Capital Hill, where support for the SBA Microloan program is broad and bipartisan and there no reason to think this program won’t receive similar support. But we’ll keep watching this one, since there’s so many slips ‘twixt political cups and lips.
