House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture
Restores Full funding of $23 million for Sec. 9006

Last evening, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture met to mark-up the FY06 Agriculture Appropriations Bill.  Funding was fully restored in the Chairman’s mark for Section 9006, the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Grant Program, at $23 million.  The Administration’s FY06 request had slashed the Program’s authorized level of $23 million down to $10 million. 

EESI has been hard at work raising awareness in the House and Senate regarding this highly successful and very popular program. Working with Rep. Gutknecht’s and Rep. Ed Case’s office, we were able to gather a bipartisan group of 34 Representatives to submit a request letter to House Ag Appropriations in support of Sec. 9006.  Also, EESI would like to thank all of the 37 groups that supported the Coalition letter we coordinated and submitted to Chairman Bonilla and Ranking Member DeLauro, urging full funding for this program.

Overall funding for Agriculture Appropriations was maintained at FY05 levels at $17 billion or $93 million above the Administration’s request.  The full Appropriations Committee will meet either later this week or the week of May 23.  Three Appropriations bills will hit the House floor the first week in June after Memorial Day Recess, which will include Ag Approps.  The Senate is scheduled to act on Ag Approps in 5-6 weeks.

For information on Ag Approps please visit: http://appropriations.house.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressReleases.Detail&PressRelease_id=479&Month=5&Year=2005 

For more information on Section 9006 and the 2002 Farm bill, please visit www.eesi.org
or contact Alexandra Morel at amorel@eesi.org.

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