President Barack Obama met with the Cabinet-level White House Rural Council to review Executive Branch response actions and to develop additional policy initiatives to assist drought-stricken Americans. Following the meeting, the White House announced several new measures the administration is implementing to help those impacted by the drought: providing additional assistance for livestock and crop producers; increasing the capacity for lending to small businesses; and waiving certain requirements on trucks helping to provide relief. President Obama also stressed the need for the entire administration to continue to look at further steps it can take to help those affected by the drought.
Obama also said that passing the farm bill as soon as possible is “the single best way to help rural communities both in the short term and in the long term.” He said he has seen “good bipartisan work” on the legislation so far, and urged lawmakers to do more.
Senators, citing forecasts of a shrinking corn harvest because of drought, are pressing the Obama administration to cut the federal ethanol production mandate to make more grain available to a livestock and poultry industry facing higher animal feed prices. Thirteen Democrats and 13 Republicans sent a letter Tuesday to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa P. Jackson urging her to exercise her authority to reduce the mandate “in the event of inadequate supplies or to prevent economic harm to the country, a region or a state.”
The senators, more than half of them from top beef-, hog-, chicken- and dairy-producing states, join 155 House members in trying to turn up the heat on the administration. The House members sent a similar bipartisan letter to Jackson last week.
President Obama on Tuesday signed into law a bill that requires the administration to detail within 30 days how it would implement the looming spending cuts in domestic and defense programs.
The sequester transparency measure, H.R. 5832, directs the White House to spell out what kinds of reductions at the “program, project and activity level” would result from allowing slated across-the-board cuts to take place. Leaders in both parties have said that federal law should be changed to derail these currently mandated $109 billion cuts but they remain deeply split about how to find an alternative plan for deficit reduction.
Biomass Research and Development Technical Advisory Committee
A public meeting of the Biomass Research and Development Technical Advisory Committee has been announced by the Department of Energy. The meeting will be held August 22 and 23 in Washington, D.C., and will provide advice and guidance that promotes research and development leading to the production of biobased fuels and biobased products.
The tentative agenda includes the following: