Remarks as prepared for delivery:
Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding today’s hearing, and thank you, Secretary Vilsack, for traveling to Washington, D.C. to join us. This Committee is well overdue for a general audience with you, so I want to mention in advance that I appreciate your willingness to appear before us to respond to each Members’ questions and concerns.
Mr. Secretary, I was hopeful when President Biden asked you to join his team. Your experience, like that of your predecessor, would continue to cultivate and execute the policies necessary to make rural America thrive.
But as I travel across the country, those who produce the food, fiber, and energy that keep this country running are telling me a different story.
Unfortunately, I am also seeing it firsthand throughout my home state of Pennsylvania. President Biden has fostered an agenda rife with executive overreach, regulatory uncertainty, and a far-left ideology that does not align with the hardworking men and women who enrich our nation and world.
Mr. Secretary, our constituents want a government that works for them, as an advocate for their businesses, their products, and livelihoods. And I will tell you, at this stage, folks do not believe this Administration is in their corner.
Farmers, ranchers, foresters, and consumers are battling significant supply chain disruptions, rising energy and input costs, increasing inflation, and longstanding labor shortages. These strains exacerbate the ongoing challenges of production agriculture.
As you know, Mr. Secretary, our communities are looking for solutions. They don’t need onerous federal regulatory burdens and mounds of new red tape. From WOTUS and NEPA to controversial livestock rules and other regulatory actions, that’s what they and we are witnessing.
Our nation’s ability to provide its citizens and the world with the safest, most affordable, and abundant food and fiber supply is our fundamental mandate. I know all of us, in both parties, realize and are motivated by this tremendous responsibility. Unfortunately, there remains a disconnect between our shared mandate and what’s coming out of Washington.
In Congress, trillions in ideological new spending was contemplated and signed into law when instead we needed targeted fixes to supply chain bottlenecks and labor shortages. Now, it appears further funding is under discussion that fails to address the frail Biden economy, including massive labor shortfalls.
Under this Administration, we see a Clinton-era swine inspection program rolled back, despite being grounded in science and designed to enhance processing capacity, efficiency, and food safety. We need greater certainty and supply chain resiliency for both producers and consumers.
On other fronts, domestic productivity relative to resource use for agriculture is up a whopping 287 percent since the 1940s, while total farm inputs remained mostly unchanged. Our producers have spent decades showing the world they are the answer to reducing global emissions, not the problem.
Activists with little knowledge of production agriculture are winning the day, and I hope this Administration and the Department rethink their alliance with these coalitions and idealogues.
Mr. Secretary, I want to be your partner. Makeshift responses to Congressional inquiries, and in many cases, no responses at all, have made it extremely challenging for my colleagues on both sides of the aisle—myself included—to maintain a meaningful dialogue with the Department. Policy briefings and Administration updates with little to no notice for Members further strain our partnership.
There is an opportunity to work together, and we stand ready. A critical part of doing so is beginning our 2018 Farm Bill implementation and oversight process and working toward the next reauthorization. That’s putting politics aside and beginning an earnest, deliberative process of what’s working and what’s not for producers, rural communities, and consumers. I look forward to starting that process with all our members and with you, Mr. Secretary.
But in the meantime, we must stabilize our economy and supply chains, improve labor force participation, deliver commonsense regulatory action, and better understand the needs of our shared constituency.
I think that starts with this hearing.
Again, I thank the Secretary for coming before this Committee and look forward to more productive and consistent discourse.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
