By Jessica Domel
Multimedia Reporter
Taking advantage of the August recess, U.S. representatives and senators have returned home to speak to their constituents about what matters most.
Among them was U.S. Rep. Bill Flores who recently stopped by Texas Farm Bureau’s (TFB) Training and Conference Center in Waco to talk to Central Texas farmers and ranchers.
“What we’re hearing about from the folks that grow our nation’s food and fuel and fiber is ‘What’s going to happen with the farm bill? What’s going to happen with tax reform?’” Flores told the Texas Farm Bureau (TFB) Radio Network. “They’re still concerned about health care issues, and they’re still concerned about the deficit.”
Whether or not health care will be reformed this year is up to the Senate, Flores said.
“The House did its job. We have not forgotten about it. We’d like to see health care reform, so we stand ready to work with the folks in the Senate to try to get something done, but really they’re going to have to have that ‘get down and be serious for their constituents’ moment, and deal with this. But, right now, they seem to want to walk away from it, and I think that would be a bad decision,” Flores said.
Although the current farm bill doesn’t expire until Sept. 30, 2018, the U.S. House and Senate Agriculture Committees are already meeting to discuss what new farm legislation will look like. Flores said that also weighs on Texans.
“I’m not hearing any big objections to the farm bill. We had a little bit of discomfort in the farm bill last time, although we got a good farm bill passed,” Flores said. “This time, the agricultural interests inside of Congress are going around and having listening sessions around the country and around Texas, and they’ll take that feedback from these listening sessions,” Flores said. “We’ll see a draft of a farm bill late in 2017 or early in 2018. Hopefully, that will go through the committee, be marked up without a lot of drama and come to the floors of the House and the Senate without a lot of drama.”
National security was also brought up by farmers and ranchers in attendance.
“If you look at all the challenge we have, we’ve got a resurgent Russia. China is trying to be aggressive. We still have the Islamic State that still wants to kill Americans. We saw what happened in Spain. We have Iran that is trying to become nuclear capable with the missiles. We’ve got Korea who is nuclear capable, and they’re trying to get the missiles put together,” Flores said. “We’ve got the national security challenges. We need to work on trade policy, tax policy and ag policy. We still need to fix the regulatory environment. We’ve made a lot of headway on regulatory environment. We need to do more.”
Flores encouraged all Texans to speak up and let lawmakers know what they need from their elected officials.
“I’m at Flores.House.Gov, and they can call us. They can email us. They can fax us. They can post on social media. It’s easy to contact us, and I think our constituents need to stay engaged on all these issues they consider to be important,” Flores said.
TFB members who are interested in contacting their elected officials can do so via VoterVoice.
Flores’ discussion with the TFB Radio Network can be heard here.