‘Half-baked’ USDA relocation irritates members of both parties on US Senate Ag panel

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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., area.

USDA Deputy Secretary Stephen Alexander Vaden defended the sweeping proposal, which Secretary Brooke Rollins announced with a five-page memo 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.

“The secretary’s memorandum was the first step, not the last step,” Vaden told Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar, the top Democrat on the panel, who criticized several aspects of the plan.

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’s footprint in five regional hubs: Raleigh, North Carolina; Indianapolis; Kansas City, Missouri; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Salt Lake City.

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’s capital, she said.

“Whittling down USDA’s resources to do this crucial work puts rural America at a disadvantage when they don’t have people in the room where it happens,” Klobuchar said.

“We have differences across the aisle,” she continued. “But 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’t have people that don’t have the interests of rural America in mind making all the decisions.”

Vaden said the USDA would keep employees in all of the department’s mission areas in the Washington area.

No advance notice

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.

“I 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,” North Dakota Republican John Hoeven said. “We 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’ll help garner a lot more support for the effort.”

In an opening statement, Chairman John Boozman, an Arkansas Republican, thanked Vaden for being available for the hearing on “very, very short notice”

Klobuchar took issue with that description.

“The reason it’s short notice is because the administration put out a half-baked plan with no notice and without consulting agricultural leaders,” she said.

Interest groups were not told ahead of the announcement, Vaden told Klobuchar, though the White House Office of Management and Budget did receive notice.

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.

He also compared the reorganization plan to the remote work that the department’s workforce used well past the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“From January 2021 to January 2025, the Biden administration, 2,200 employees left Washington, D.C.,” he said. “There 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.”

Midwest Republicans miffed

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.

“I don’t have any questions,” Justice said. “All I’m telling you is, we absolutely need to move and do the very best that we can for these great people.”

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.

Hoeven questioned the proposed siting selections, noting Fargo, North Dakota, didn’t have a hub within 600 miles. Fargo is “in the heart of ag country,” Hoeven said.

“What’s magic about five hubs?” he asked. “How much agriculture is there in the state of Utah? We can go through all those things and whether, in fact, it’s actually easier or better for our farmers and our ranchers in North Dakota, given the five hubs you’ve selected.”

Utah ranked 37th in total agricultural income, according to the USDA’s 2023 statistics.

No Nebraska hub

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’s workforce outside the Beltway, and advocated for Nebraska as a suitable location.

Because of that, she was underwhelmed by the proposal and its introduction.

“I would have liked to see a process that allowed for Nebraska to demonstrate its strong value proposition,” she said. “So 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.”

Meanwhile, Colorado Democrat Michael Bennet, whose state would see a regional hub that would also house a consolidated U.S. Forest Service office, said he agreed with the plan’s goals.

“I 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,” Bennet said. “So philosophically, that’s where I’ve been.” 

This post was originally authored and published by Jacob Fischler from Missouri Independent via RSS Feed. Join today to get your news feed on Nationwide Report®.