There’s no ‘moo’ in the word ‘stimulus’

The Hill reports on the proposed dairy buyout:

Stimulus legislation under consideration in Congress may have a little something for everyone, but it won’t include a government buyout of dairy cows. Cattle ranchers who worried that the provision would lower the price of beef lobbied against the buyout, although it is unclear how seriously lawmakers in the Senate or House considered it. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) wrote members of the Senate last week asking that they oppose any effort to use stimulus funds to buy older dairy cows from farmers. Heather Vaughan, a spokeswoman for the group, said they believed an effort to take about 6.5 billion pounds of milk off the market would involve purchasing 320,000 dairy cows. Those cows would then end up in the beef market, probably for use as ground beef, Vaughan said. While this would help dairy farmers by raising the price of milk, NCBA argued it would hurt cattle ranchers by lowering prices by as much as 49 percent.