Immigration on House Ag Chair’s radar

by | Oct 6, 2017 | 5 Ag Stories, News

 

Insight from the Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee on a number of hot agricultural topics.

For much of my career, the chair of the House Agriculture Committee was the most powerful congressional force on future agricultural policy. In the 1980?s, Kika De La Garza, from Texas, was called ?Mr. Chairman? as he dictated policy from a Democrat prospective.

In 1994, the House of Representatives rolled to a Republican majority and Pat Roberts, from western Kansas, became the chair of the House Ag Committee. In 1996, he guided Freedom to Farm Act as a revolutionary farm bill through Congress to passage. The bill may have been good at that moment, but times changed and much of the legislation had to be amended in order to save farmers through 1997 to 2002.

Mike Conaway is chair of the House Ag Committee and Pat Roberts is chair of the Senate Ag Committee. Both Republicans and both from sparsely populated regions of the country where farming is a major enterprise, but not one that makes money every year.

Conaway provides his thinking on the topic of immigration and the prospect of getting works into the United States under a new program that would be more friendly for year-round workers. Mike Conaway was asked about immigration and a bill proposed by former House Ag Chair Bob Goodlatte, from Virginia.