Friday, March 06, 2009

Farm Bureau Calls ‘Cow Tax’ Bill Timely and Critical

Legislation introduced today to prevent a “cow tax” on farmers and ranchers is both “timely and critical,” said the American Farm Bureau Federation. In a letter to the bill’s sponsors, Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), AFBF commended their bipartisan efforts and said the organization would work with them to ensure that the legislation gains broad support. The Thune-Schumer bill would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from imposing Title V operating permits on U.S. agriculture operations under the Clean Air Act. Those permits automatically result in mandatory fees. If EPA were to regulate greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) under the act, as the agency indicated it was considering last year in an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, AFBF calculated that it could cost farmers and ranchers $175 per dairy cow, $87.50 per beef cow and $21.87 per hog. The fees were arrived at using publicly available government data...Farm Bureau

There are many dairy cows in New York...just in case you thought Schumer was doing this out of the kindness of his heart.

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