During a House Appropriations Committee hearing last week, Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) spoke about tribal food distribution programs.
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00:00He gets his turn, but Mr. Sherman, it's your turn.
00:02Thank you very much, and I know you've got a hard stop, so I'll try and be as accommodating to you as I can.
00:08First, just one piece of unsolicited political advice.
00:11Make Maryland your favorite state.
00:13Yes, yes, that's fair.
00:15You know, word to the wise.
00:17That's fair.
00:17You did just get our basketball coach from Texas A&M, so, yeah, I've become much more interested, but yes.
00:23Well, yeah, I won't even get into basketball after what the Thunder did the night before last, but.
00:29We'll move on.
00:30Yeah, not before last.
00:32Anyway, a couple quick things.
00:33Number one, I'm not going to read an opening statement, Mr. Chairman, if I may.
00:36I'll just submit it for the record.
00:37You don't need to hear that.
00:39There's a couple of questions I do have, but before I do, I want to commend you for what you are doing in reviewing grants and money out the door.
00:47Look, every administration, I'm not even saying it's the partisans, it's at the end is shoving out every dime they can,
00:53and we've had numerous examples in the billions of dollars.
00:57I think a one to a nonprofit formed last year for $2 billion that your colleague, Lee Zeldin, and our former colleague pointed out was clearly political, clearly ill-advised.
01:06So you are well within your rights.
01:08I agree very much with what the gentle lady from Iowa had to say about this, and so thank you for doing it.
01:13And I know you catch a lot of flack for it, and I know sometimes, you know, folks that should have gotten money, it takes a little longer, and that is a problem.
01:22Yeah.
01:22But you're doing the right thing, and, you know, I know you'll make sure the worthy recipients get it, but you can save the taxpayers some money.
01:31That's a good thing, not a bad thing.
01:33Two questions I have.
01:34One's pretty easy, the, well, I hope it's easy.
01:39You know, states like Oklahoma voluntarily established state inspection programs to better serve our meat processors, and we're eligible for up to 50% cost share.
01:51In the last administration, we didn't get the full 50% match.
01:54That's really put us in a difficult spot in terms of meeting all the needs of our local and particularly our smaller producers.
02:01So, if you've got a chance to think about this, will the USDA be providing the 50% cost share this fiscal year for state inspection programs?
02:13Do you know if you're going to?
02:14I don't know off the top of my head, but we will get back to you today on that, and I would believe that if this was, you know, it's obviously very important to my neighbor, to the north Oklahoma, and our cattle producers, that that seems important.
02:30If you looked at it, and look, we also get it, and I actually direct this to the members as well.
02:34There's a lot of legitimate complaints about how many hearings we're having and how quickly.
02:39That's because you're a new administration.
02:41It took a while to get everybody in place.
02:43We don't have a full budget yet, which I would urge.
02:47I know you're working with OMB.
02:48We're glad we got the skinny budget, but that's not a full budget.
02:51We need the full budget.
02:52And I will tell this, and we'll talk about it in full committee to my fellow committee members.
02:57We are going to get every one of these damn bills out of here by the August break, so it's going to be a hectic schedule, period, because we have no chance of getting things done by the end of the fiscal year if this committee is not able to expedite its work.
03:09So I'm going to push the members and the staff awfully hard.
03:13The thing's got here.
03:14But again, this is a new administration.
03:15Every administration in its first year goes through this because they don't have time to get the budget done.
03:21It takes a while to get their people through.
03:23And so it's just kind of the nature of the beast.
03:26Second question.
03:27Last year, under the last administration, it was very unusual.
03:30We had a tremendous problem with tribal food distribution programs, so much so that we actually had a bipartisan hearing.
03:39It was a hearing between both the appropriations and ag.
03:41And honestly, we had genuine bipartisan concern over this issue, partly because all of us that represent tribal communities had begun hearing about this a lot.
03:54I mean, you know, these promised deliveries of food weren't showing up.
03:57And we began hearing the complaints in April.
04:00You usually don't get people talking in the same voice and going after administration.
04:06I want to commend my Democratic colleagues on this a few weeks before an election on something like this.
04:11But it was so bad that people were doing it.
04:14So you have a lot.
04:15There's a lot of, you know, first Americans were the first farmers, too.
04:19They're pretty good at what they do.
04:21And we certainly have a lot of tribal farmers in Oklahoma.
04:25We have a lot of tribal needs in terms of trust and treaty commitments the federal government's made over the years.
04:31So I'd be curious as to if you've had a time to even look at those programs and if you could get back to us about how are we doing now.
04:40Because literally last time when we went through this, while we were hearing the complaints in April and while we know the Ag Department was hearing the complaints in April,
04:48the secretary actually, your predecessor, testified that he didn't know anything about it until August.
04:54I mean, how in the world it doesn't get from, you know, the front door to the secretary's desk when we're talking about food distribution to needy senior Indians for months?
05:05Yeah.
05:05You know, it tells me there's something that was very wrong with the bureaucracy and the flow of information in the Ag Department last time.
05:11Yeah.
05:11Well, I am familiar with it.
05:13Let me get a full update for you, and I'll call you later today if that's okay.
05:17T.W. Shannon, a great Oklahoman, is on our-
05:21He used to work for me.
05:21Well, he's on our senior staff.
05:23I know.
05:24Focusing on rural prosperity, and certainly he is of these communities as well.
05:29Very much, sir.
05:29So I'll loop him in and make sure he's at least an every day, every minute conduit for you.
05:35But you can always call me as well.
05:36But we'll put him on it.
05:37Thank you very much.
05:37Yeah, thank you, sir, very much.
05:39Thank you, Madam Secretary.
05:40You're back.