Republicans continue to push back on spending in the Budget Reconciliation package, even as negotiations continue with a potentially lower price tag.
Washington Congressman and third-generation farmer, Dan Newhouse is calling on the Biden administration to remember rural America in policy development. He says that the $4.3 trillion dollar spending package will have unintended consequences.
According to Representative Newhouse, “They’re blind to the impacts their own policies are already having on Americans across the country. Inflation is at a thirteen year high, and now they are looking to raise taxes on small businesses and family farms-- all while hiring 87,000 more IRS collection agents.”
He is also critical of plans to pay for it with tax hikes: “The Democrats’ proposed ‘death tax’ would devastate central Washington families looking to pass their farm on to their children. In fact, this provision alone is often the determining factor as to whether family farmers and ranchers can maintain their land from generation to generation or if that land will be broken up, sold off, and paved over.”
He is also concerned about the regulatory burden for farms and plans to bring back the Waters of the U.S. rule.
“This dangerous policy empowers federal bureaucrats to place every single body of water-- every ditch, puddle, and stream-- under federal regulation, and as a result, the livelihoods of farmers and rural communities across the nation are at stake,” he explains. “A farmer could be fined thousands of dollars by the EPA if they so much as rotate their crops without asking permission from the federal government-- that is the real-world impact of these ridiculous policies.”
Newhouse says that Democratic policies make it harder for family farms to stay afloat, especially when faced with international threats as well.
“It’s not just Democrats’ disastrous policies we’re having to fend off. That’s why I, alongside my Republican colleagues, am leading the effort to stop our foreign adversaries, like communist China, from gobbling up American farmland and taking control of our food supply chain,” he adds.
The effort is a bipartisan move by farm state lawmakers to increase oversight on foreign investments of acquisitions of American farmland and companies.
Related:
FARM Act: looking out for farmers, our food supply and national security
AFBF opposes President Biden’s social spending agenda
Keeping an eye on tax changes as House Dems release their proposals