Michael Bennet

Honestly, I think part of the problem we ran into the last time we were going through this was the Department was not staffed up in the way that it needed to be.

I hate to say this, but I think, probably, I do not get to make the call.

It is really aggravating and irritating that this happened during the middle of tax filing season.

I think that the TABOR refund should have been placed in the first category.

I would like to see an authentic and deep, committed investment into young, beginning, small, traditional, Indigenous, land-based farmers of color by the USDA.

I think answering that question is going to be so vital for the next generation of Americans and the generations coming after that.

I agree strongly with the view that other people have expressed today, that one-size-fits-all approaches, when it comes to American agriculture, does not make a lot of sense.

The rollout for that has been very slow and very unclear.

Senator Marshall and I introduced a bill just earlier today.

I think to contrast RCPP, our two Gunnison projects are a perfect example.

That sounds like a pretty good list.

It is critically important that we have these conservation programs and that we make sure they work.

USDA has never fully implemented many of these provisions.

Nothing is more important in Michigan than protecting our water.

It is remarkable, I think, to have the kind of breadth of perspectives that we have had this morning.

Thank you, Honorable Michael Bennet and Roger Marshall, for holding this important hearing and for inviting to share my story and bring the young farmer perspective to this conversation.

I am excited to have somebody on the Agriculture Committee who has got as much firsthand experience as you do.

Today our farmers and ranchers are not dealing with the Dust Bowl, but they are facing, in my part of the country, a 1,200-year drought.

They deserve conservation programs at USDA as imaginative as they are, as ambitious as the problems they seek to solve.

It is not free. It is legal.

When I think of this RCPP, Trout Unlimited is the lead partner.

We have the lowest economic mobility that we have had in generations.

From my point of view, you know, we are living in the richest country in the world, and our level of childhood poverty is criminal.

What I saw when the Child Tax Credit went away, the Enhanced Child Tax Credit went away, was lines at food pantries just, you know, go up like this, skyrocket like this.

When the Biden administration came in we cut childhood poverty by 50 percent, the most significant reduction in childhood poverty in American history.