The Senate is scheduled to vote tonight after 5:30 on whether to approve $1.15 billion for a discrimination settlement for African-American farmers.
The vote on the Pigford settlement will be a unanimous consent request, a spokesman for Majority Leader Harry Reid confirms to TPMmuckraker. That means it will pass unless a senator objects.
Congress has tried to pass legislation enacting the fund several times since President Obama announced the settlement in February by attaching it to various bills. Each time, the settlement has had to be stripped out for the bill to pass.
The case came into the spotlight recently during the Shirley Sherrod debacle. Sherrod, the USDA official fired after a severely edited video of her was posted online, had been a recipient of Pigford money. Some conservatives used the occasion to call the Pigford settlement — which gives money to black farmers who were discriminated against by the USDA — a “fraud.”
(H/T Politic356)
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