WASHINGTON - House Speaker Dennis Hastert said he will push for an extension of a milk support program when House and Senate negotiators work out differences between two budget-cutting plans.

The Senate's plan calls for extending the Milk Income Loss Contract program, known as MILC, for two years. The House plan, which passed Friday morning, does not.

But in a letter to Rep. Mark Green, R-Wis., released Friday, Hastert, R-Ill., said he would instruct House negotiators to secure the two-year extension.

The taxpayer-funded MILC program, which expired Sept. 30, paid dairy farmers cash when milk prices fell below certain levels. Lawmakers from Western states like California and New Mexico oppose the plan, saying their dairy farmers don't benefit from it.

"Obviously, this is still not concrete and a guarantee, but it's a huge step toward forward," Green said in a telephone interview.

He said that supporters of the program have been working behind the scenes to get the program extended.

"Part of the timing was if we had made the announcement a couple of days ago, the California interests would have looked for ways to block us," Green said.

The program paid out a little more than $2 billion to dairy farmers since its inception in 2002, including $162 million to Minnesota farmers.

The MILC program paid farmers only on their first 2.4 million gallons of milk each year, which translates to about 120 cows. That made the program popular in the Midwest and Northeast, which tend to have smaller farms, but not so popular in the West, home to much larger dairy operations.

Some of those farmers say the program hurt them by subsidizing smaller operations and putting more milk on the market.

Sen. Pete Domenici, a New Mexico Republican and one of the program's leading opponent in Congress, promised Friday to fight the extension in its current form.

"If MILC proponents are able to craft a compromise solution that represents better national policy, I am certainly willing to listen," said Domenici, who will serve as a Senate negotiator. "Extending MILC in its current form is unacceptable, and I will oppose it vigorously in conference."

Although the Senate bill calls for extending the program, it does so at reduced levels.

When prices fell below a baseline level, the program paid dairy farmers cash to cover 45 percent of the difference.