Farmers and other rural voters were instrumental in putting Donald Trump in the White House, but the president-elect, four days away from inauguration, has yet to return the favor at USDA. Democrat Tom Vilsack, the longest-serving agriculture secretary in half a century, underlined the absence of a Trump nominee to head USDA by leaving the job a week before the change of administration.
Undersecretary Michael Scuse will be acting secretary until Friday, when the role would be handed to a civil servant. USDA has declined to say who will become the acting secretary with the change in power. The new administration will have dozens of policymaker positions to fill across the department.
In the past eight decades, only Franklin Roosevelt took longer than Trump in announcing his agriculture secretary, Henry Wallace, on Feb. 28, 1933, but Roosevelt had more time to act. He took the oath of office for his first term March 4, 1933. The 20th Amendment, ratified in 1933, set Jan. 20 for the start of presidential terms.
Vilsack has chafed during interviews at the seeming lack of attention to agriculture by the Trump transition team. There has been grumbling in the countryside, too. Trump has a five-person “landing team” at USDA, smallest among cabinet departments except for Education, which also has five. Vilsack has remarked on the lost opportunity to brief his successor. “When that individual is named, he or she will be at a tremendous disadvantage in terms of getting up to speed on all this department does,” Vilsack told The Associated Press.
Dan Glickman, agriculture secretary during the Clinton era, said the late start will put the new administration at a disadvantage. “Without leadership from the top there won’t be strategic planning, there won’t be setting new objectives of what’s happening,” Glickman told the Flatland blog of KCPT-FM in Kansas City. “It’s very difficult to deal with Congress when you don’t have political leadership on top.”
Iowa farmer Ron Heck, a member of Trump’s agriculture advisory committee, told Agriculture.com that he is not worried by the lack of a nominee. “He [Trump] is learning that agriculture isn’t just one thing.” Trump met face-to-face with half a dozen possible nominees without making an immediate choice. Heck said there are friends of agriculture in important places in the administration — Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, the vice president-elect, and Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, nominated for U.S. ambassador to China. “I’m extremely pleased with our agriculture presence in the Trump administration,” he told Agriculture.com.
Trump spokesman Sean Spicer told Agri-Pulse that Trump “understands the importance” of the agriculture sector in the U.S. economy and wants a nominee who knows “how to implement his agenda to achieve those goals … I would expect an announcement sometime soon.”
Vilsack left with a glowing note to USDA’s 90,000 employees. “What an amazing job you do each day for the country,” he said in an email. “I have been honored to be one of you.” USDA’s portfolio ranges from food stamps and farm subsidies to rural economic development.