While news coverage focuses on investigations, hearings, subpoenas, and other madness in Washington, DC, one member of the President’s cabinet has been steadily and persistently doing the job to which he has been called.
This week, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue visited his 50th state. In two years and a few weeks, he traveled to all 50 states plus Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and multiple foreign countries.
He made several RV tours, appropriately named, “Back to Our Roots.” Rolling down the back roads of rural America across multiple states he went to do something spectacular for which Washington, DC is not known. He went to listen.
His travels covered over 100,000 miles. He visited over 100 farms and held nearly 200 townhall meetings.
The people came to meet him. They gathered in barns, school gymnasiums, college campuses, churches, fields, town squares, cafeterias, processing plants, and the list goes on. Governors, members of Congress, State Legislators, County Commissioners, Mayors, farmers, ranchers, teachers, students, pastors, small business owners, homemakers, and small children came to meet Secretary Sonny.
Immediately after Sonny Perdue took the oath of office, President Trump directed him to head up a Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity. Ninety days later he completed the report with specific recommendations and action plans.
The top recommendation was to make broadband accessible to rural America. He compared it to the national investments in the 1930’s to provide electricity and telephone service to rural areas through the Rural Electrification Act and the Telecommunications Act.
Less than a week after he was sworn in, Sonny went to an elementary school in Virginia and announced that he was rolling back the onerous school lunch regulations of the Obama administration. School nutritionists, also known as the “lunchroom ladies” as he fondly recalled from his childhood, were spending more time trying to comply with rules than feed their students.
Even worse, they were helplessly watching as kids dumped their Obama Approved lunches in the trash. It didn’t take him long to trash the regulations and make school lunches great again.
He restructured the mission areas of USDA to focus on the customer. He slashed regulations. His top priority was opening markets for U.S. agricultural products. He told farmers, “if you grow it, we’ll help you sell it.”
Knowing that agriculture would be the prime target for retaliation by other nations against the President’s trade policy, he diligently worked with President Trump to provide some mitigation. No one likes what the Chinese and other nations are doing to U.S. agriculture but he stands with the President in addressing issues that have been swept under the rug for decades. Farmers, although hurt, are standing with the President.
Sonny took another step that is unheard of in Washington, D.C. He reached out to other agencies to coordinate efforts in overlapping responsibilities.
He was perhaps the most outspoken cabinet member calling on the EPA to get rid of the burdensome and intrusive Waters of the US (WOTUS) Rules. He worked closely with the Department of Labor to help farmers navigate the cumbersome H2A Visa process.
Where the Food and Drug Administration had legal responsibility for some areas of food safety, he worked with them to align USDA regulations. When it came to the farmers, he was like a protective mother bear. He bluntly made it clear that he did not want to have FDA inspectors, who knew nothing about farming, to be treating farms like a pharmacy inspection.
He made sure that USDA had a seat at the table to help shape rules in other agencies so agriculture’s voice was heard. HUD, Department of Energy, Homeland Security, Department of Interior, and more have the fingerprints of Sonny Perdue.
Sonny Perdue’s vision for USDA is that it is the most effective, most efficient, most customer focused agency in the federal government. Just as he did when he was Georgia’s Governor, that vision will come about.
He adopted a motto for USDA, “Do Right and Feed Everyone.” When these trade disputes are resolved and America’s farm products can start flowing in free and open markets, America will be sending food to all corners of the globe to help make that motto a reality.
Fifty states visited in two years. That is doing right.
Congratulations on that Mount Everest of a milestone. America is blessed to have you serve and Georgians are proud of you.
by 
