Since January, Sonny Perdue’s job has been simple yet slow to come into reach: Win Senate confirmation as agriculture secretary. Perdue’s predecessor at USDA, Tom Vilsack, said during a public radio interview, “Gov. Perdue faces a real set of challenges because his confirmation has been delayed as long as it has.”
President Trump’s final nominee for the cabinet, announced on Jan. 19, will get the latest start of any USDA chief in an incoming administration since the USDA was elevated to cabinet rank in 1889. Most agriculture secretaries take office at the same time as, or shortly after, the presidential inauguration. A former two-term governor of Georgia, Perdue will begin work at least 10 weeks after Trump and might not report to the USDA headquarters until May.
“He faces a daunting task when he walks into that building, that’s for sure,” said Vilsack on “1A,” produced by WAMU-FM in Washington. Aside from the long vacancy at the top, which Vilsack says creates issues by itself in a large bureaucracy, “He also does not have any of the political appointees underneath the secretary, the undersecretaries of the various mission areas, the administrators, the state directors — none of those people have been appointed.”
The largest U.S. farm group, the American Farm Bureau Federation, and the National Grain and Feed Association, representing processors, exporters and handlers, called for Senate confirmation this week. That timeframe is considered a long shot. They said “a backlog of policy issues” await Perdue, the first Republican elected governor of Georgia since Reconstruction, as well as the chore of naming deputies to carry out Trump administration policies.
“It also is vital to have Gov. Perdue engaged fully within the administration and with Congress on international trade, farm bill and regulatory issues affecting U.S. farmers, ranchers and agribusinesses,” said the two groups.
Also waiting for Perdue is the White House proposal for a 21-percent cut in discretionary spending in the fiscal year that opens Oct. 1. The proposal would end the McGovern-Dole food program for schoolchildren overseas and a program of grants and loans for water and sewer projects in rural communities. Vilsack told the Drovers news site recently that Perdue “is going to have to educate … the White House about the leanness of the USDA budget and the good work that’s being done there.”
USDA has an annual budget of around $150 billion, most of it in entitlement programs such as farm subsidies and food stamps and dominated by public nutrition. Congress is gathering ideas for the 2018 farm bill, which includes foreign food aid, ag research, land stewardship and crop insurance programs along with farm supports and food stamps.
Also on “1A,” Vilsack, now the chief of U.S. Dairy Export Council, indicated he has moved to the sidelines of politics. “I think it’s time for a new generation, time to step back,” he said. Vilsack served two terms as governor of Iowa and briefly ran for the Democratic presidential nomination that went to President Obama in 2008. He campaigned for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton last fall. Vilsack was agriculture secretary throughout both Obama terms, becoming the first eight-year secretary in half a century.
Rural America was key in Trump’s election as president. Vilsack said Democrats failed to compete for rural votes for years. “I think we took too much comfort in winning the presidency and not realizing what was happening below the presidency to our party,” he said, “I think that is going to change.”
Asked about “ag gag” laws to shield livestock producers from undercover photography and whistleblowers, Vilsack said, “I am not a supporter of those laws.”
To listen to the “1A” interview, click here.