Washington ? Rural counties in the nation’s midsection are losing population at staggering rates, but the Senate-passed budget aims to reverse that trend.

Lawmakers added enticements to the budget designed to lure people and businesses back to small towns. The rewards are part of a larger package named the New Homestead Act after the 1862 law that offered free land to settlers in the West.

The legislation wouldn’t give away land, but it would offer investment cash for companies that move to, or expand in, places that are losing population. And it would repay half of college loans, up to $10,000 for anyone who lives and works in an eligible county for five years.

“This will provide room in the budget for real incentives for reversing the flow of people, especially young people, away from the heartland,” said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.

Dorgan and a bipartisan group of senators sponsoring the New Homestead Act added the incentives to the budget that passed the Senate last week. Other incentives, such as tax credits for businesses and for home buyers, are not in the budget but are still in play.

Rural population has dropped steadily over the past two decades from the Canadian border to Texas and from the Rocky Mountains to the Missouri River.

Half the counties in Kansas could qualify for the budget bill’s venture capital fund and loan forgiveness, said Sen. Sam Brownback, another of the bill’s sponsors.

“Today, after decades of decline, less than 2 percent of the nation lives on farms or in rural areas,” Brownback, R-Kan., said Monday. “This is not only devastating to a state like Kansas, where we rank sixth in the nation in out-migration, but also to the entire central portion of the country.”

The next step will be to persuade members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, on which Dorgan and Brownback serve, to find money to pay for the bill’s $2.2 billion price tag.

“If it’s not in the budget, it doesn’t happen,” Dorgan said. “So this is an absolutely critical step in passing major legislation to help reverse the trend of out-migration in the heartland.”