{"id":3312,"date":"2025-07-30T16:34:03","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T21:34:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/westplexnews.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/30\/half-baked-usda-relocation-irritates-members-of-both-parties-on-us-senate-ag-panel\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T16:34:03","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T21:34:03","slug":"half-baked-usda-relocation-irritates-members-of-both-parties-on-us-senate-ag-panel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/westplexnews.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/30\/half-baked-usda-relocation-irritates-members-of-both-parties-on-us-senate-ag-panel\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Half-baked\u2019 USDA relocation irritates members of both parties on US Senate Ag panel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"U.S.<\/p>\n

U.S. Deputy Agriculture Secretary Stephen Alexander Vaden testifies before the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee on July 30 (Photo via committee livestream).<\/p>\n

Members of both parties on the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee chastised a U.S. Department of Agriculture official Wednesday for not consulting Congress before proposing to shift thousands of jobs out of the Washington, D.C., area.<\/p>\n

USDA Deputy Secretary Stephen Alexander Vaden defended the sweeping proposal, which Secretary Brooke Rollins\u00a0announced<\/a> with a\u00a0five-page memo<\/a> last week, saying it would help bring the department closer to the people the government oversees and lower the cost of living for federal workers, while pledging to work with members of the committee over the next month of planning.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe secretary\u2019s memorandum was the first step, not the last step,\u201d Vaden told Minnesota\u2019s Amy Klobuchar, the top Democrat on the panel, who criticized several aspects of the plan.<\/p>\n

The proposal calls for cutting 2,600 of the 4,600 USDA jobs in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia and expanding the department\u2019s footprint in five regional hubs: Raleigh, North Carolina; Indianapolis; Kansas City, Missouri; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Salt Lake City.<\/p>\n

Klobuchar said moving workers out of the capital region hurts the constituencies USDA serves. Agency officials should be nearby to meet with members of Congress, other executive branch offices and trade groups that are based in the nation\u2019s capital, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhittling down USDA\u2019s resources to do this crucial work puts rural America at a disadvantage when they don\u2019t have people in the room where it happens,\u201d Klobuchar said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have differences across the aisle,\u201d she continued. \u201cBut I think every one of my colleagues understands that you need people that can meet with you, you need people that can go over to the White House so that you don\u2019t have people that don\u2019t have the interests of rural America in mind making all the decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vaden said the USDA would keep employees in all of the department\u2019s mission areas in the Washington area.<\/p>\n

No advance notice<\/h4>\n

Even Republicans who said they generally agreed with the aims of the proposal indicated they did not appreciate the lack of notice before it was announced.<\/p>\n

\u201cI support finding cost savings where you can, I support the idea of moving people out of the D.C. area and out into the field and closer to the farmer,\u201d North Dakota Republican John Hoeven said. \u201cWe support the goals, but we want it to be a process where you work with Congress, with the Senate, both the authorizing committee and the Appropriations Committee on it, and we achieve those results together. And I think that\u2019ll help garner a lot more support for the effort.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an opening statement, Chairman John Boozman, an Arkansas Republican, thanked Vaden for being available for the hearing on \u201cvery, very short notice\u201d<\/p>\n

Klobuchar took issue with that description.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason it\u2019s short notice is because the administration put out a half-baked plan with no notice and without consulting agricultural leaders,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Interest groups were not told ahead of the announcement, Vaden told Klobuchar, though the White House Office of Management and Budget did receive notice.<\/p>\n

In response to complaints about the lack of engagement with Congress, Vaden said that lawmakers were notified at the same time as USDA employees, shortly before the announcement was public, and he emphasized that the announcement started a 30-day engagement period that would involve Congress.<\/p>\n

He also compared the reorganization plan to the remote work that the department\u2019s workforce used well past the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom January 2021 to January 2025, the Biden administration, 2,200 employees left Washington, D.C.,\u201d he said. \u201cThere was no congressional notice, there was no outcry, there was no committee hearing. For more than 1,700 days, extending well beyond any fair definition of the COVID pandemic, USDA was on a maximum telework footing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Midwest Republicans miffed<\/h4>\n

Some Republicans on the panel offered hearty endorsements to the proposal, including Jim Justice of West Virginia, who used his time to promote the plan instead of questioning Vader.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have any questions,\u201d Justice said. \u201cAll I\u2019m telling you is, we absolutely need to move and do the very best that we can for these great people.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the issue transcended party lines in several cases. Some Republicans whose states were passed over in selecting the proposed hubs had sharp questions for Vaden, while some Democrats who would gain a federal presence under the proposal were less critical.<\/p>\n

Hoeven questioned the proposed siting selections, noting Fargo, North Dakota, didn\u2019t have a hub within 600 miles. Fargo is \u201cin the heart of ag country,\u201d Hoeven said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s magic about five hubs?\u201d he asked. \u201cHow much agriculture is there in the state of Utah? We can go through all those things and whether, in fact, it\u2019s actually easier or better for our farmers and our ranchers in North Dakota, given the five hubs you\u2019ve selected.\u201d<\/p>\n

Utah ranked 37th in total agricultural income, according to the\u00a0USDA\u2019s 2023 statistics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

No Nebraska hub<\/h4>\n

Nebraska Republican Deb Fischer said she had discussed with Vaden, prior to his confirmation hearing this year, the possibility of moving some of the USDA\u2019s workforce outside the Beltway, and advocated for Nebraska as a suitable location.<\/p>\n

Because of that, she was underwhelmed by the proposal and its introduction.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would have liked to see a process that allowed for Nebraska to demonstrate its strong value proposition,\u201d she said. \u201cSo while I do agree with the overreaching goal here, I have to express disappointment in how this has been rolled out and the lack of engagement with Congress prior to the announcement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Colorado Democrat Michael Bennet, whose state\u00a0would see a regional hub<\/a> that would also house a consolidated U.S. Forest Service office, said he agreed with the plan\u2019s goals.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have long called for the idea of trying to relocate people from Washington, D.C., to parts of the country, to partly to get out of the insulation of this place, to just be closer to, in this case, producers, but others as well,\u201d Bennet said. \u201cSo philosophically, that\u2019s where I\u2019ve been.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

U.S. Deputy Agriculture Secretary Stephen Alexander Vaden testifies before the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee on July 30 (Photo via committee livestream). Members of both parties on the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee chastised a U.S. Department of Agriculture official Wednesday for not consulting Congress before proposing to shift thousands of jobs out of the Washington, D.C.,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n\u2018Half-baked\u2019 USDA relocation irritates members of both parties on US Senate Ag panel - WestplexNews.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/westplexnews.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/30\/half-baked-usda-relocation-irritates-members-of-both-parties-on-us-senate-ag-panel\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u2018Half-baked\u2019 USDA relocation irritates members of both parties on US Senate Ag panel - WestplexNews.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"U.S. Deputy Agriculture Secretary Stephen Alexander Vaden testifies before the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee on July 30 (Photo via committee livestream). 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