Nearly a year after taking office, President Trump tabbed farm group official Ken Barbic to be USDA’s congressional liaison, rewarding western growers who backed his campaign. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said he was “very excited by the nomination” while noting that two nominees for top-tier posts at USDA are bottled up in the Senate.
Perdue, who had a historically late start in his job, is running something of a ghost ship at the executive level of USDA. Only three other Trump appointees have been confirmed to sub-cabinet jobs, executives who are one step below Perdue and who put administration policy into action.
The administration has no nominees for five of the seven undersecretary posts; each of whom directs one of USDA’s operational arms, such as food safety or public nutrition. One of its nominees for undersecretary, Sam Clovis, withdrew from consideration under a cloud from his work as co-chair of the president’s campaign committee and arguments he lacked the scientific background to oversee USDA’s research agencies.
According to Partnership for Public Service, there are 14 jobs at USDA that are filled by presidential appointment, starting with Perdue and running through the USDA’s chief lawer and its chief financial officer. The Senate has confirmed nominees to four of those jobs. Two nominees are awaiting Senate confirmation, Bill Northey, to be the undersecretary in charge of farm subsidy, crop insurance and land stewardship programs, and Stephen Vaden for general counsel. There were no nominees for the other posts; Barbic was selected for assistant secretary for congressional relations but not yet formally nominated.
“Ken will bring a wealth of knowledge, insight and experience to USDA and I am eager to get him on the job right away,” said Perdue in a statement. ““Unfortunately, two other qualified nominees, Bill Northey and Stephen Vaden, are still awaiting Senate confirmation. I urge the Senate to take up all three nominations as quickly as possible.”
Barbic is a senior official in the Washington office of the Western Growers Association, which represents fruit and vegetable growers, chiefly in California and Arizona. A former Capitol Hill staffer and congressional liaison for the U.S. trade representative’s office, Barbic has presented the group’s views on immigration reform, tax reform and international trade to lawmakers.
Western farmers, like producers across the country, supported Trump for president. The chief executive of the growers association, Tom Nassif, was a member of rural and agriculture advisory committee for Trump. The president singled out Nassif by name for attention along with a number of elected officials, when he spoke to the American Farm Bureau Federation last week in Nashville.
The three Senate-confirmed USDA officials in addition to Perdue are Deputy Secretary Steve Censky and undersecretaries Tim McKinney and Greg Ibach. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican, put an informal “hold” on Northey’s nomination in a dispute with Midwestern senators, also Republicans, over ethanol. Senate Democrats have signaled that Vaden can expect a full debate on his nomination. Before joining the Trump team, Vaden was part of a legal team that filed friend-of-the-court briefs in support of strict voter ID laws in Ohio, North Carolina and Virginia.
Besides the absence of permanent leaders in the top tier of USDA, there are vacancies in leadership of some USDA agencies, according to a farm lobbyist.