Rep. Kristi Noem is on recess again. Theoretically, she's available to talk to South Dakotans about her ongoing failure to get a Farm Bill done. She'll surely be parading around on her horse at any rodeo she can find. But she hasn't posted any public events on her official public calendar for two months. The only August Noem event I've heard about is another big-ticket fundraiser with Speaker John Boehner in Sioux Falls on August 16th (if anyone has a copy of the invite, I'd be happy to have the confirmation).
If you can get Kristi to come down off her high horse during recess, farm reporter Alan Guebert says you should ask our Congresswoman why she, Boehner, and the GOP keep jerking farmers and ranchers around (no, really, that's the term Guebert uses):
What must these non-legislating legislators do -- after killing the 2012 Farm Bill without a vote, voting down a comprehensive 2013 Farm Bill and barely passing an ugly, partisan ag-only bill -- to prove to you that their closed minds and discredited ideas are more important than America's food security and the farms and ranches who deliver it?
Like it or hate it, government plays a deep, daily role in U.S. agriculture. From crop insurance to meat inspections to school lunches to export financing, our food is safe, abundant and fairly cheap because we empower our government to make it so.
Reforming some, maybe many, farm and food programs is open to debate; defaming, de-funding and destroying many key programs, however, is just dumb, and you -- we -- are not dumb [Alan Guebert, "Little Hope for Farm Bill," Mitchell Daily Republic, 2013.07.31].
Don't be fooled: we have no Farm Bill now, and we may end another year without one, thanks primarily to Kristi Noem's unwillingess and inability to do anything but serve her own political and personal fortunes.
Why would Noem alter any part of the farm bill currently being administered that doesn't suit her suitors? The action/inaction is pretty clear: money is being doled to her donors now.
Just another welfare queen on the public dole. GOP majority has become the party of part time occupants while being full- time freeloaders.
South Dakota elected a wig, an empty head of hair. High maintenance, low output. We would have done better if we voted for the horse.