Hello friends,
This coming Tuesday I will be hosting a tele-town hall for our district at 6:00 p.m. CT to provide an update on what I have been working on and hear from you about what issues are important to you and your family. To join, you can call 855-920-0558. Look forward to hearing from you!
COMMITTEE NEWS: I was named the Ranking Member of the House Agriculture Committee’s Subcommittee on Nutrition, Oversight, and Department Operations. The subcommittee addresses policies and statutes relating to nutrition, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and domestic commodity distribution and consumer initiatives, as well as department agency oversight and special investigations.
During this pandemic, more families are struggling to put food on the table as they suffer job losses and income reductions. I am looking forward to working on how we can best make nutrition and domestic food assistance programs more efficient and effective so families most in need will get the assistance these programs were intended to provide. This includes looking at ways we can improve program integrity and move people toward self-sufficiency by incentivizing work. You can read more about it here.
As a member of the House Ag Committee, I feel it is important to hear from ag producers and business leaders about how federal policy affects them. That is why I have traveled to western Nebraska several times to hear “straight from the horse’s mouth” what is important to the ag community. This past week, I met with members of the Nebraska Dry Bean Commission in Gering, NE; toured Pennington Seed in Sydney, NE; and met with ag producers including the Holzfaster family in Paxton, NE.
I also serve on the House Armed Services Committee and visited the F.E.Warren Air Force base in Wyoming, where they oversee intercontinental ballistic missile wings. I am committed to working to modernize these aging systems.
Next week, we head back to DC, and I hope that Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats will at least hear some of the concerns Republicans have with the next COVID relief package. One concern: not all of the money has been spent on the previous packages, so why we are authorizing even more? Also, let’s target relief to those Americans who truly need it: those whose hours have been reduced or have lost their jobs. Speaker Pelosi took zero input from the House GOP in the writing of the newest COVID bill, refused GOP input during the amendment process, and made clear she intends to pass this on a party line vote. This $1.9 trillion so-called COVID relief bill contains lots of non-COVID policies that she has been unable to pass. It also takes us to nearly $6 trillion in spending on COVID relief alone, when our annual budget is normally $4.5 trillion. This is a totally partisan bill.
We need to work together to address these issues and get America on the road to recovery, instead of worrying about whether or not a twice-impeached President should be allowed to be buried at Arlington Cemetery. That’s right, House Democrats introduced H.R. 484 in late January; the “No Glory For Hate Act” which would "prohibit the use of Federal funds for the commemoration of certain former Presidents” who have been impeached twice.” Our country deserves better and deserves meaningful legislation that actually liberates and assists Americans as we climb out of this pandemic.
I look forward to hearing from you about these issues and others, this coming Tuesday at 6:00 p.m. CT.
