WASHINGTON (AP) -- To dairy farmers, the fight over government milk controls that brought the Senate to a near standstill was a matter of economic survival. For consumers, it will mean a few extra cents a gallon at the grocery store.

The battle is over revisions in the minimum prices that bottlers and processors must pay farmers for milk.A compromise budget bill Congress was finalizing Friday would:

--Impose new minimum prices opposed by farmers in Minnesota and Wisconsin, but favored by farmers nearly everywhere else.

--Allow New England to continue fixing milk prices above the federal levels through a regional compact.

--Toss out a new pricing system proposed by the Agriculture Department and favored by consumer groups and processors as well as Midwest producers.

Farmers are expected to earn an extra 19 cents per hundred pounds of milk next year under the new system being mandated by Congress, 5 cents more than they would have made under the USDA plan.

The legislation represents "an enormous victory for tens of thousands of dairy farm families across the country," said Jerry Kozak, chief executive officer of the National Milk Producers Federation, which opposed the USDA plan.

Retail prices vary widely around the country according to numerous factors, including the federal program, prices paid to farmers, supermarket competition and local milk-drinking habits, and they are likely to drop this winter because of heavy overproduction of milk.

But the action by Congress -- if signed by President Clinton -- will mean milk will cost 4 cents more per gallon than it would have under the existing program, and 2 cents more than it would have under the USDA plan, the department says.

Denver residents, who would have saved 6 cents a gallon under the USDA plan, will pay 2 cents a gallon more under the new system. New Yorkers would have saved a penny; instead they'll pay 4 cents more. Philadelphians, who would have saved 3 cents under the USDA plan, will pay 3 cents more.

Consumers "are going to pay more for milk and, regrettably, they're going to drink a little less milk," said Art Jaeger of the Consumer Federation of America.

Final passage of the budget bill was held up until the four Minnesota and Wisconsin senators got assurances Friday from Majority Leader Trent Lott that the Senate would take up dairy policy again next year.

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"We should not stop at this point," said Lott, R-Miss. " ... We should look for a way to get away from compacts and the kind of government controls we have now."

Farmers in Minnesota and Wisconsin have been fighting this battle for years. The reason USDA proposed a new system this year was because Congress gave up trying to come up with a new system in 1996 and ordered the department to find a solution.

The existing system, designed to stimulate milk production in areas where it was lagging in the 1930s, guarantees farmers in the South and East a significantly higher price than producers in Minnesota and Wisconsin. The plan in the new bill would soften the regional disparities but not as much as USDA and the upper Midwest wanted.

Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., isn't sure his region can prevail next year, either. "Given what's happened, permit me to be skeptical until we see the product."

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