Derrick Van Orden is getting called out by the president of the Wisconsin Farmers Union for his failure to pass a new Farm Bill that supports and helps Wisconsin farmers and families.
First, Van Orden remained silent as his party called for $50 billion in cuts to critical programs. Then, he punted Farm Bill reauthorization until next year, giving up an opportunity to better support Wisconsin farmers and consumers.
DCCC Spokesperson Mallory Payne:
“Derrick Van Orden is prioritizing his party instead of advocating for the more than 64,100 farms in Wisconsin or the families who are seeing rising prices due to his failure to pass a new Farm Bill. Wisconsinites are making it clear they’re ready to send Van Orden packing.”
UpNorth News: By punting the Farm Bill to 2024, Congress misses a chance to help farmers and consumers squeezed by middlemen
Pat Kreitlow | November 29, 2023
- By extending the current package of farm, trade, nutrition, and conservation programs until September 2024, the Farm Bill stays out of the current morass, but farm and consumer advocates also say it’s a missed opportunity to address an out-of-balance market that drives farm prices down and consumer prices up while raising profits for corporations in the middle.
- Split control of Congress, however, makes it just as likely that the eventual rewriting of the Farm Bill—something normally done every five years—could make conditions worse instead of better. Far-right Republicans were already demanding $50 billion in cuts from conservation programs in an earlier threat to force a government shutdown.
- At that time, Von Ruden called out Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, Wisconsin’s only member on the House Agriculture Committee, for not speaking out against the cuts or on behalf of ways to rein in corporate monopoly powers that lead to lower prices for farmers and higher prices for consumers.
- “Wisconsin’s farmers need a champion more than ever,” Von Ruden wrote in an October CapTimes opinion column. “But so far Van Orden has failed to deliver anything other than empty slogans.”