House Ag Appropriations Questions Perdue on ERS Move

Sanford Bishop and Sonny Perdue go way back. So far back that Bishop, now a 14-term, Democratic congressman from south Georgia, remembers when Perdue, now the Secretary of Agriculture under President Donald J. Trump, was a Democrat.Their friendship was tested April 9 when Perdue appeared before the House Appropriations ag subcommittee to defend the president’s 2020 budget request for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Bishop, as chairman of the subcommittee, oversees every taxpayer nickel USDA receives.During his question time, Bishop roasted the secretary’s plan to move two USDA agencies, the Economic Research Service and the National Institute for Food and Agriculture, out of Washington, D.C. No one, he said, favors the move except Perdue.Not only that, Bishop went on, Perdue was moving ahead with his plan despite the subcommittee not receiving a cost-benefit analysis on it that the secretary had promised. In fact, he continued, Perdue’s rush to shuffle ERS and NIFA out of town just “seems to be a solution in search of a problem.”When asked to comment on those facts — especially that no one with any working knowledge of his plan endorsed it — Perdue went full farm folksy: “Mr. Chairman,” he said, “I’m just amazed that all those people you mentioned could all be wrong.” He then grinned weakly. Bishop is just the latest public official to question Perdue on his ERS/NIFA plan. All — like Perdue himself — have seen no evidence to support it because, in fact, there is no evidence to support it. Moreover, Perdue can’t explain it in any terms other than nonsense like “getting ERS closer to its customers.” On May 7, however, Politico, a Washington-based news service, reported that the plan was the Trump Administration “retaliating” against the ERS “for publishing reports that shed negative light on White House policies…” Specifically, ERS “has run afoul of… Perdue… with its finding on how farmers have been financially harmed by President Donald Trump’s trade feuds, the Republican tax code rewrite and other sensitive issues…”