Last Minute Dash to Fund $1.5 Billion Pigford Settlement?

From Black Voices News:

Approximately 80,000 black farmers missed the deadline for the 1999 settlement. In February 2010, the Obama Administration announced a $1.15 billion agreement to resolve the second round of claims, with the purpose of bringing “these long-ignored claims of African-American farmers to a rightful conclusion.”

The funding has passed the House but has been stalled in the Senate, where it has been attached to several bills only to be scratched out.

Senators Kay Hagan (D-NC) and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, also stood with Boyd, during the news conference to announce they are introducing a standalone bill with Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) to fund the $1.15 billion settlement. “We’re working together to send this language to the President as quickly as possible because our Black farmers have waited too long,” said Sen. Hagan. “We want to ensure Black farmers in our country finally receive the justice they deserve,” she said.

“More than 4,000 African American farmers in North Carolina and over 75,000 nationwide have been discriminated against and denied just compensation for decades. Today, I join with my colleagues from Louisiana and Arkansas, Senators Landrieu and Lincoln, to introduce a bill to fund the settlement once and for all, and we are working to send this language to the President.”

The news conference was the culmination of the mile long march, led by Boyd, which began at the steps of the Department of Agriculture and ended at the U.S. Capitol. Among the participants: John Bonner of Dinwiddie, Virginia, whose father passed away earlier this year but continues to have an outstanding claim.

“At this late and critical stage of the process I was compelled to walk over to the Senate, stand up with my friends, and speak out for jobs, for justice, and for civil rights,” said Waters. “I will continue to speak and work with John Boyd and the Black farmers to make sure that this issue is finally resolved in a swift and fair manner.”

Read the whole thing here. No matter what happens in November, the Democrats won’t have the number of seats they currently hold in Congress. Expect more mad dashes on legislation and spending like this. Of special interest is the pre-printed sign behind Sen. Kay Hagen. Paid for by the Answer Coalition, a stalinist, anti-war organization, founded in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks. Odd bit of mission creep here.