Agriculture

Agriculture remains a top industry in our state, and we must make sure that we advance initiatives that strike the right balance between ensuring fiscal responsibility, providing certainty to our farmers and maintaining the strength of our agribusinesses. As former Chairman of the Agriculture Policy Group under the Republican Policy Committee and Co-Chairman and founder of the bipartisan Agriculture and Rural America Task Force, I am working daily to effectively and efficiently streamline our federal government to empower our farmers and entrepreneurs and get our economy back on track.

Providing Certainty for Our Farmers

Through the years, the tools our farmers use to harvest their crops have drastically transformed and expanded to accommodate America’s growing demand for food, forest products and livestock. As the ways we harvest our lands and provide for our nutrition needs have changed, so should the policies that govern them. We owe it to our farmers to equip them with the tools and certainty they need to produce an affordable and stable food supply.

This is why I supported the 2018 Farm Bill. This bipartisan, bicameral bill saves taxpayers’ money, reduces spending, improves farm policy, and replaces wasteful government programs with common-sense reforms. While I had hoped the Conference Committee would maintain all reforms and savings found in the House-passed bill, specifically regarding the reforms to food stamps, the status quo is simply unacceptable.

This important legislation is a comprehensive response that gives aid to our farmers and rural communities who have been hit hard by natural disasters and retaliatory tariffs.

Highlights:

Commodity Programs: The 2018 Farm Bill reauthorized and strengthened crop commodity programs such as the Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage. These important programs provide our farmers the certainty they need when securing operating loans and the security in times of low prices and poor harvests. Our growers need an appropriate safety net to ensure that American agriculture will remain the most abundant and safest food supply in the world.
Rural Broadband: As I speak with farmers and rural constituents in the 8^th District, one of the biggest concerns discussed is access to rural broadband. The 2018 Farm Bill made substantial improvements giving UDSA the authority to make grants to bring broadband access and higher speeds to rural America.

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Policy

While the food stamp program serves a noble purpose to provide support for many Americans who have hit bottom, it is not meant to keep them there.

We need to equip these citizens with the tools they need to participate in our workforce and become self-sufficient, and this bill took significant steps to do just that. I will continue to support responsible reforms to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse in these programs while ensuring those who truly need help can get it.

There are several programs important to North Carolina’s farmers and producers that we must still address leading up to the next Farm Bill. I look forward to working on these issues with my colleagues and continuing my work on behalf of our growers, producers and agriculture community.

To learn more about the 2018 Farm Conference Report, click here.

Repealing the Unfair Death Tax

The biggest concern amongst our farmers is how to keep future generations on the farm and how to pass down the benefits of years of labor to their children and grandchildren. The “death tax” (also known as the estate tax) is bad Washington policy that crushes the profitability of farming and drives farmers out of the industry. The death tax is a tax imposed on the transfer of the taxable estate of a deceased person.

You will be pleased to know changes to the death tax were included in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that was signed into law by President Donald Trump on December 22, 2017. This legislation doubled the exemption for taxes on the transfer of the estate of a diseased person starting in 2017 and repeals the tax all together starting in 2025.

Previously, I have introduced legislation to prevent family farms from paying this immoral estate tax. My bill, the Farmers Against Crippling Taxes Act (H.R. 30), would permanently repeal the federal estate tax and end the double taxation that threatens the existence of family farms, small businesses and jobs.

In addition, I have voted to repeal the death tax and have been awarded the Benjamin Franklin Award by the 60 Plus Association, a national non-partisan senior citizen’s organization, for my work to eliminate the death tax.

Reducing Bureaucratic Regulations

The Trump Administration has made it a priority to reduce unnecessary and burdensome regulations across the federal government.

Back in February of 2017, President Donald Trump signed an executive order on reducing regulation and controlling regulatory costs and enforcing the regulatory reform agenda. This executive order has given agencies the direction to save taxpayer dollars and alleviate Americans from burdensome Obama era regulations.

Every day, new businesses struggle as they are forced to comply with rules that even go so far as to tell them what type of light bulbs to use or whether their own children can work on the family farm. We must do everything we can to reduce the burdensome regulations..

As your Congressman with oversight over our federal agencies, I have sought out several policies that I believe are negatively affecting our farmers and rural Americans. I’ve voted to reduce funding for the EPA and decrease its staff to the lowest levels since 1989. I also voted to block many harmful regulations, including the EPA’s outrageous “Waters of the United States” rule to regulate irrigation ditches and ponds on our farms through redefining navigable waters under the Clean Water Act. This misguided power grab would give limitless federal control over nearly all state and local waters and have devastating economic consequences for farmers, property owners and communities in North Carolina. I will continue to do all that I can to protect our agriculture community from bureaucratic overreach.

Protecting the Tobacco Transition Payment Program (TTPP)

In November of 2013, I joined a bipartisan group of my colleagues in a letter urging Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and Budget Director Sylvia Burwell to take necessary steps to ensure that the Tobacco Transition Payment Program (TTPP) is not subject to FY2014 sequestration cuts.

Tobacco is an integral part of North Carolina’s agriculture and economy, and its growers are some of the hardest working producers in our state. TTPP helped move this important crop into the free market and provided certainty to stakeholders when they needed it most. Moreover, this program is entirely funded by fees assessed on tobacco product manufacturers and importers, and therefore should not be subject to sequestration to make up for fiscal mismanagement elsewhere.

I am pleased that we were successful in convincing USDA and OMB to protect this user-funded program from sequestration cuts. (Tobacco Farmer payments not subjected to sequestration, Raleigh News & Observer)

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repName	John Smith
helpWithFedAgencyAddress	Haverhill District Office 1234 S. Courthouse Haverhill, CA 35602
district	21st District of California
academyUSCitizenDate	July 1, 2012
academyAgeDate	July 1, 2012
academyApplicationDueDate	October 20, 2012
repStateABBR	AZ
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repState	Arizona
repDistrictText	1st
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SponsoredBills	Sponsored Bills
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Office Locations Push

Office Name	Location	Image	Map URL
Washington, DC Office	2112 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 Phone: (202) 225-3715 Fax: (202) 225-4036 Hours: M-F 8:30am-6:00pm		https://goo.gl/maps/FfWdN51zAXA2
Concord Office	325 McGill Avenue, NW Suite 500 Concord, NC 28027 Phone: (704) 786-1612 Fax: (704) 782-1004 Hours: M-F 8:30am-5:30pm		http://goo.gl/maps/RmioT
Fayetteville Office	225 Green Street, Suite 202 Fayetteville, NC 28301 Phone: (910) 997-2070 Fax: (910) 817-7202 Hours: M-F 8:30am-5:30pm		https://goo.gl/maps/Mni25etRVjS2
Pinehurst Office	Sandhills Community College Logan Building, Room 221 3395 Airport Road Pinehurst, NC 28374 (910) 246-5374 Hours: Tues/Thurs 8:30am-5:30pm and by appointment		https://goo.gl/maps/v1B4FZR24Ao
Albemarle Office	Stanly County Commissioner's Office, Suite 9 1000 N. First Street Albemarle, NC 28001 Phone: (704) 786-1612 Hours: Third Thursday of Every Month, 9:30am-12pm		https://goo.gl/maps/2D5wgRcZy8Yh9Hps8