Vilsack pointed to rural America’s diminishing impact as a reason Congress was unable to pass a farm bill in 2012 during an election year. More than 80 percent of lawmakers are not representing rural areas, making it an uphill battle for those outside of urban areas to be heard in Washington.Talking to farmers and lawmakers representing agriculture-intensive states or districts isn't going to get you much useful information. Farmers love to puff up how important we are to those damn useless citiots (my invention), but the fact is that people living in Manhattan can afford to import their food staples from Brazil or other parts of the world if necessary. Even with record crop prices (driven by China demand and government-mandated biofuels production), folks paying for $2500 studio apartments will be able to afford bread and meat. And talking to those Tea Party representatives of flyover country is just a fool's errand.
As their influence diminishes, lawmakers representing nonmetro America are left to collect a smaller piece of government spending, and they have less influence on laws and regulations that affect people in their area.
“It’s time for us to have an adult conversation with folks in rural America,” said Vilsack, who urged those living in rural areas to be proactive and not to hang on to the successes of the past. “We need a proactive message, not a reactive message. How are you going to encourage young people to want to be involved in rural America or farming if you don’t have a proactive message? Because you are competing against the world now and opportunities everywhere. Young people have all of these opportunities.”
The former Iowa governor said the strong agricultural economy “supported by high commodity prices, growing demand for ethanol and other renewable fuels and the increased use of public land for recreation” has failed to improve the rural economy. Poverty rates hover at 17 percent, higher than in metropolitan areas.
Farmers and lawmakers representing agriculture-intensive states or districts strongly disagree with Vilsack’s analysis of a declining of rural America. While their political power in Washington may have eroded, farmers point to the food, fuel and jobs they produce, along with their impact on the country’s economy, as evidence of their ongoing importance.
“It’s a little disappointing to hear the secretary of this great nation make a comment like that. We have less power as a vote, but as far as relevancy, we are more relevant today than we’ve ever been,” said Justin Dammann, who raises corn, soybeans and cow calves near Essex in far southwest Iowa. “I kind of question if (Vilsack is) not just trying to get us fired up.”
In fact, the backassward policies of those Representatives is one of the main things making rural areas less relevant. The idiots like Jim Jordan and Tim Huelskamp who represent areas which end up being net beneficiaries of federal taxation and spending policies but oppose those same policies makes them worthless to deal with when legislating. Yet, these representatives are guaranteed to get re-elected, no matter how useless they are as legislators. The fault for this falls directly on rural residents who just don't understand their government or their own dependence on that government for sustaining their way of life.
The big problems with the sustainability of rural life are also the big problems affecting the entire U.S. economy and the middle class especially. They are globalization, income inequality and increasing productivity decreasing the need for employees. Right now, farmers are making a stack of money, but as farms get bigger and use ever more productive equipment, fewer people are needed to do the work, so the returns go more and more to capital. This leaves less money going to the rural version of the have-nots, the non-farmers. Kids from rural areas are going to college and moving to the city to get a job. With populations stagnating, rural areas will never thrive.
The danger for rural areas is that the residents have bought into the conservative mantra that rural areas are "real America," and everybody else is leeching off of them. The facts just don't sustain that. One of the biggest cash welfare programs currently going is the earned-income tax credit, and if you look at the statistics for median income for rural and urban areas, it is pretty clear who qualifies for that program. That welfare payment comes as a refundable tax credit, so without actually looking closely at your tax return, you might not even realize you get it, since payroll taxes (which aren't refunded) are such a high percentage of most workers' tax payments. Such an oblique transfer payment gets lost in the discussion of taxes and welfare programs, and allows a number of welfare beneficiaries to not even realize they are beneficiaries. Slashing federal social spending will quickly make the loss of such benefits to rural areas very noticeable very quickly. The programs benefiting rural areas touch on all parts of our lives: transportation, agriculture policy, transfer payments, defense spending (How many rural areas have large military bases? I'm looking directly at you in the Great Plains.), food programs, education, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, etc. Since incomes are lower in rural areas than in urban areas, people in rural areas don't pay nearly as much in federal taxes as people in urban areas. Therefore, in entitlement spending, rural areas are overrepresented as recipients. This makes the Tea Party representatives, and the voters who elect them working against their own interests. Don't think that representatives of urban areas don't know this, and therefore don't let the rural areas gain any more influence than what they already misuse. Stagnation in already sparse populations, lack of wealth and cluelessness in the operations of the world will definitely lead to a decline in political influence, no matter how quick you are to claim your own greatness.
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