Trade policy | New farm bill | Budget cuts | Fires and disaster aid | Food aid | Crop insurance
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Sonny Perdue’s nomination hearing to be USDA Secretary begins this morning amid budget cuts, trade policy concerns and low commodity prices.
Perdue, 70, President Donald Trump’s nominee to head USDA, will appear before the Senate Agriculture panel this morning. While some questions will focus on recent media reports of potential conflict of issue matters while he was governor of Georgia, the key policy items addressed will be the US commodity slump, high anxiety in the agribusiness sector about President Trump’s trade policies, and the 21 percent budget cut the president proposed for USDA. The Trump administration last week proposed cutting the USDA’s discretionary budget by one-fifth to $17.9 billion, which would be the lowest since 1988. As Georgia’s governor, Perdue led trade missions to China and Cuba.
Perdue is expected to clear the Senate committee, and ultimately the full Senate, with ease. In February, more than 600 organizations in the food and agriculture sector sent Senate Agriculture leaders a letter urging them to swiftly confirm Perdue, who was the last Cabinet-level nominee to be named when Trump announced him as the pick for Agriculture secretary on the eve of Inauguration Day. And he is the last of the 22 Cabinet-level picks to face a confirmation hearing.
USDA needs a leader. Senate Agriculture Chairman Agriculture Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) has promised that the panel “will move as quickly as possible in a bipartisan fashion to accomplish its work and get the governor down to the department.” Roberts added that “agriculture needs a voice, an advocate, a champion at the highest levels of government.”
Other key issues likely to be addressed at the nomination hearing are Perdue’s thoughts on a new farm bill, the food stamp (SNAP) program, the need for farm workers and thus immigration policy, agricultural research, crop insurance and food aid. Recent devastating wildfires in Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Colorado will generate questions from the panel on USDA’s role in fire prevention as well as disaster response. Perdue pledged to place most of his business interests into a blind trust, if confirmed.
Comments: The hearing comes on a key day when House members are expected to vote on a health-care reform bill, while another big media interest will be the continued look at Neil Gorsuch as Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court.
NOTE: This column is copyrighted material; therefore reproduction or retransmission is prohibited under U.S. copyright laws. |
