Fourth District Focus: Sitting down with the Hancock County Economic Development Corporation in Garner

My 36 County Tour brought me back to Hancock County on October 24th. Previously, I’ve traveled to Hancock County to hold a Farm Bill town hall in Britt to speak with the public and get input from producers on their priorities for a new, improved Farm Bill. On another prior stop, I stopped in Garner to tour Iowa Mold Tooling with employees and local officials and hear about how they are working with local high schools to grow our workforce. 

For this recent trip, I met with the Hancock County Economic Development Corporation in Garner where I held a roundtable to discuss several important issues such as EPA overreach, affordable daycare solutions, and the Farm Bill. 

It has now been over 160 days since the House Agriculture Committee passed a new and improved Farm Bill. This updated legislation features many great policies which I introduced – like the Crop Insurance for Future Farmers Act, which lowers the cost of crop insurance for our young and beginning producers during their first ten years in operation; the Fortifying Refrigeration Infrastructure and Developing Global Exports (FRIDGE) Act, which will help build cold storage facilities and make port improvements at home and abroad to ship Iowa-made products across the globe; and the FARMLAND Act, which strengthens oversight of foreign purchases of our farmland, especially by China. These policies provide our producers with a full trough of resources to grow and succeed while keeping American farmland in the hands of American farmers.

During our roundtable, we also discussed the importance of strong families and pro-family resources. As a father of four, I am familiar with struggles that can come with raising a family. That’s why I joined Rep. Adrian Smith, from Nebraska, in introducing the Small Business Dependent Care FSA Opportunity Act. This legislation offers a new tax credit to small businesses that provide resources to families to ease the cost of daycare. I also introduced the Combatting High Inflation Limiting Daycare (CHILD) Act to double the amount of money that families are allowed to save tax-free in DCFSAs to pay for childcare.

Finally, we talked about the Biden-Harris administration’s overreaching EPA. In July of this year, I led over 150 of my colleagues in calling on the administration to repeal its electric truck mandate that would drastically increase operating costs for millions of truckers, farmers, and small businesses across the country. In April, I also had an amendment to the Department of the Interior appropriations bill that I sponsored pass the House of Representatives, which would require explicit congressional approval of any regulation that would affect more than half of America’s farmland. I will always push back on regulatory attacks on our farmers and small businesses.

As I travel across the 4th Congressional District on my 36 County Tour, I reflect on the importance of developing solutions from the source. Iowans know what Iowans need – not bureaucrats in Washington. I am honored to work for so many passionate citizens to craft sensible policy solutions.