Yakym: Extension Needed for Farm Bill
Published: Friday, September 1, 2023
The farm bill clock is ticking, and farmers are waiting to see what happens before the Sept. 30 deadline.
With the current law set to expire on that date, Indiana's 2nd District Congressman said he expects a short-term extension to be passed.
Rudy Yakym (R-2nd) visited Parker Farms in LaPorte last Thursday to answer questions and hear concerns from local Farm Bureau members. The farm bill was one of the main topics of discussion.
"We do intend to pass a farm bill sometime this fall," Yakym said, adding that a short-term extension will be needed before that point.
The five-year farm bill has 12 titles covering commodities, crop insurance, conservation, trade, rural development, credit, research and Extension, forestry, horticulture, energy, nutrition and miscellaneous areas. The nutrition title, alone, consumes 85% of the farm bill budget.
Yakym said he has a good relationship with U.S. Rep. G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Agriculture Committee.
"All the priorities that we submitted to the House Agriculture Committee, G.T. and I are in full alignment on," Yakym said. "I've got no pushback from G.T. on the priorities that we've submitted to the Agriculture Committee."
Having traveled to roughly 30 farms in the 2nd District, Yakym said he has heard unanimous support for the crop insurance program.
He said Democrats and some Republicans want to eliminate or reduce subsidies the government pays to keep crop insurance policies affordable. But he said the majority of House Republicans favor a do-no-harm approach and want to preserve crop insurance in its current form.
"So, as your representative, we are representing that belief and that point of view in Washington," Yakym said.
He said crop insurance is especially important for younger farmers. That is because many bankers require their farmers to purchase crop insurance as a condition for getting a loan.
Yakym said the goal of farm legislation is to maintain a safe, uninterrupted food supply and giving farmers freedom to do what they do.
"We want to make sure that we keep the federal government off of our farmers' backs," Yakym said. "You don't need the federal government coming in here and telling you how to grow your crops."
Yakym, who is a member of the House Budget Committee, said his overall goal is to reduce federal spending and bring the federal budget into balance.
"Specifically, what we're focused on is discretionary funding, and particularly our non-defense discretionary funding," he said.
Federal spending increased dramatically during the pandemic, and now the first-term congressman would like to eliminate some of those programs—and prevent new ones from going into effect.
One example he mentioned was President Biden's proposal to hire 87,000 new IRS agents.
"These are enforcement agents that will do nothing but make our lives miserable," Yakym said.
Another example is restoring work requirements for those who receive government benefits.
"One of the reasons the federal budget is so inflated right now is because we removed work requirements from a number of programs at the beginning of the pandemic," Yakym said. "We have not yet put all of those work requirements back on."
He stated that up to 8 million people were added to Medicaid during the pandemic. But he said many of these beneficiaries are capable of holding jobs.
"The single biggest growth of Medicaid recipients in this country are able-bodied, working adults between the ages of 18 and 59 with no dependents," Yakym said. "That's your workforce."
Driving people back into the work force has several benefits, according to Yakym. Not only will it decrease federal spending, but it will also increase economic output and tax revenue.
"My single biggest concern for future generations ... is the total federal deficit that we have."
With Democrats in control of the White House and the Senate, Yakym acknowledged that it will be difficult to reduce spending. Leaders from both parties will have to engage in some "pretty tough conversations."
Regardless of where he goes in the 2nd District, Yakym said he hears one complaint: inflation is a big problem.
"The reason we have inflation is because, simply, our federal government spends too much money. We're spending a trillion and a half to $2 trillion more than what we're taking in, and we have to rein in federal spending," he said.
Asked about his first year in Congress, Yakym recalled the day in August 2022 that he learned that his predecessor, Jackie Walorski, had died along with three others in a car accident. He described Walorski as a "dear friend" and had served as the finance director for her campaign.
"It came as a total shock to me—what happened on Aug. 3 of last year," Yakym said. "I was on an island in northern Michigan with our company, which had a retreat, and I was in front of about 20 of my colleagues giving a presentation on a business unit that we had just formed when I saw a text message that came up informing me of what happened."
Yakym was nominated, and eventually elected, to serve the remaining portion of Walorski's term in Congress. Voters also elected him to serve a new two-year term.
His wife, Sally Ann, is a third-grade teacher at a private Christian school in Elkhart County. They have three children, ages 14, 12 and 8.
Yakym said he lives in the 2nd District and commutes to Washington, D.C.
Some congressmen, after being elected, relocate their families to the nation's capital.
"I get on a plane on a fly-out day or a fly-in day to D.C. I leave the house at 6 a.m., get to Washington. We do our business Monday through Thursday, and as soon as our votes are done, I get on a plane and come back," Yakym said. "I don't stay weekends."
He credits his team of aids for helping him to integrate his family obligations, such as his son's soccer match, into his congressional schedule.
Yakym also fielded a question about California's controversial Proposition 12, which prohibits the sale of pork meat not produced according to the state's housing. The ban targets sow crates, which has been an industry standard for decades.
"The issue I have is, if you want to screw up your own state—I'm a state's rights guy – it is well within your right to do so," he said. "But you can't screw up everybody else's state as part of that."
Yakym said that while the Supreme Court upheld Prop 12, it left the door open for Congress to make changes.
"What I'm advocating for is that we weigh in on Prop 12 through the farm bill," Yakym said. "The farm bill is our vehicle within which we will rectify that. I can't promise outcomes, but what I can promise is inputs. And the input that I'm putting in here is that we overturn Prop 12 and disallow California's ability to regulate what we do here in Indiana."
Other issues:
• High fuel prices—"Does anyone know why gas prices and diesel prices were substantially lower a year ago?" Yakym asked the Farm Bureau members. "What happened ... we have a Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the United States. We were flooding the markets with oil through the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. We were releasing a lot of oil out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and driving down the price of oil just before a midterm election. Then, after the election, all of a sudden, we turn it off." He said the Strategic Petroleum Reserve currently sits at 40% of capacity. He wants to increase production of domestic oil and encourage investment in that area.
• WOTUS (Waters of the U.S.)—"You cannot have the federal government look at a puddle on your farm, declare that a navigable water and then therefore say the EPA has jurisdiction over that puddle. We've been very clear about that," Yakym said. He added that President Biden vetoed a bill passed in both the House and Senate that would have rejected EPA's WOTUS rule. Since then, Yakym has introduced a "farmer informed" WOTUS bill to make sure that farmers have a seat at the table with EPA when they are issuing a ruling affecting farmers.
Congress is currently in recess and will return to Washington on Sept. 12.
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