Newhouse: Doge Cuts Are Concerning For Farm Country

How are Doge cuts impacting the farming community?  That depends on who you ask.

Some in rural America are applauding the Administration’s work to trim agencies in an effort to shrink the national debt.  But others are concerned that these cuts to USDA, ARS, and others will create more problems for farmers than they will prevent.  Central Washington’s Dan Newhouse said the federal government spends more money each year than is brought in, which is not a sustainable path forward.

“It's not always easy to find those efficiencies, we're working through that right now through our budget reconciliation process to make every single agency as efficient as possible," Newhouse said.  "But, it's going to take some time and it's and I want to be as strategic as possible so that we keep those important functions available to people, while at the same time, eliminating those things that that we don't need and that's that, that doesn't happen overnight. It's, like I said, a work in progress.”

Newhouse added right now the Administration is trying to match the workforce to the current workload, to trim unneeded or unused positions.  But Newhouse, a member of the House Ag Committee, was quick to point out that many of those Doge cuts were not as surgical as he would have liked.  So work is underway to bring back employees that Newhouse said were let go prematurely.

“Those kind of things have true impacts, long term impacts potentially for our agricultural industries, ability to compete and we're trying to make sure that those kind of decisions are made with more thoughtfulness.”

Newhouse added as a producer himself, he is very concerned about the federal government’s effort to be efficient, noting “I want to make sure we don't cut off our nose to spite our face”.

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