WASHINGTON, DC – Funding for Livestock Mandatory Reporting (LMR), which requires meatpackers to report purchases and sales of livestock and livestock products to the USDA, .will continue under a stopgap bill passed Feb. 17.
The Senate voted last Thursday to pass a bill to avert a shutdown at the end of the week ahead of a Friday deadline when government funding has been set to expire.
Congress’s actual deadline for passing appropriations legislation is at the end of September each year. Because bills from the previous year expire at that time, lawmakers need to approve a new set of 12 appropriations bills to fund federal agencies and make sure the government doesn’t run out of money. (If the government runs out of money and shuts down, agencies are forced to furlough employees and reduce services.)
Had these bills passed on time, all spending would have been approved last fall. Instead, because Democrats and Republicans won’t come to an agreement, they continue to pass short-term spending bills, the first in December. When they couldn’t reach an agreement then, they passed another short-term spending bill that postponed the deadline to February 18. And because of ongoing conflicts, they have passed yet another short-term spending bill to give them until mid-March.
