By Tim Carpenter, Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — Republican U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran pressed Trump administration officials on federal budget and personnel decisions by framing inquiries in terms of potential threats to the farm economy and public safety in Kansas.
Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel and U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins were on the receiving end of Moran’s questions during recent Senate hearings.
Moran inquired during an appropriations subcommittee hearing about implications of a recommended $545 million cut in expenditures that could eliminate 1,300 FBI jobs. The GOP senator said lawmakers were told reductions would be accomplished by ending duplicative intelligence gathering, initiatives tied to diversity, equity and inclusion, and projects championed by Democratic President Joe Biden.
“Is that accurate?” Moran said. “Is that capable of being done? We can find this in what I suppose most people around here call waste, fraud and abuse? Or, does it have real consequences to the level of personnel and the capabilities of meeting the mission of the FBI?”
Patel said the objective of reorganization at the FBI was to “make the mission work on whatever budget we’re given.”
Moran said an overall force reduction at the federal law enforcement agency could weaken public safety in Kansas.
“Fewer FBI special agents, intelligence analysts and professional staff could hinder the bureau in executing the president’s commitment to making our communities safe,” Moran said. “Our law enforcement, whether state, local or federal, keep our nation safe and carry out justice.”
Moran, chairperson of the Senate’s commerce, justice and science appropriations subcommittee, asked about Patel’s initiative to move FBI positions out of Washington, D.C. The senator said the FBI might shift up to 40 agents to Kansas.
Moran urged Patel to not concentrate new personnel in FBI offices in Garden City, Manhattan, Wichita and Topeka or to curtail collaboration with local law enforcement.
“While you’re decentralizing Washington, I don’t want to shortchange the field office, but I want to make sure the field office doesn’t then shortchange the other aspects of law enforcement in our state,” Moran said. “We should see an increase in FBI participation, in partnership, with local law enforcement as a result of this change in policy? Is that true?”
Patel said the FBI didn’t intend to transfer agents by “throwing darts on a map.” The FBI would concentrate staff transfers in areas with higher incidence of violent crime, he said. The director said geography of sparsely populated states would be a factor in assignment of agents.
“We aren’t sending more agents to LA just because it’s LA,” Patel said.
In terms of agriculture policy, Moran shared with USDA Secretary Rollins a perspective on President Donald Trump’s decision to terminate thousands of probationary federal employees. The senator emphasized the detrimental result of personnel cuts designed to “right-size, downsize, whatever the right words are” the Farm Service Agency and other USDA offices in the state.
“We love the circumstance when a young man or woman out of college returns home and goes to work for USDA in the county office,” Moran said. “We do not have sufficient personnel in those county offices today. Secretary Rollins, will you pay particular attention to making certain that county offices, where farmers sit across the table from USDAemployees, are sufficiently staffed?”
Hollins said it was important to keep in mind USDA was formed to serve interests of farmers and ranchers. The Trump administration was focused on delivering economic prosperity to agriculture, she said.
“As President Trump is working to make America great again and restore prosperity across the country, my role in that is to ensure that rural America sees a level of prosperity that perhaps we haven’t seen in our lifetimes,” she said.
Moran asked Hollins to outline USDA’s vision for the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan. The $1.2 billion federal laboratory was built to research biological threats transmitted from animals to humans, including foot-and-mouth disease and swine fever.
“Tell me or get me a report on NBAF’s operational status,” Moran said.
Hollins said the Trump administration was committed to moving NBAF forward “in a way that serves all of America.”
Moran, who co-chairs the Senate Hunger Caucus, asked Hollis to provide assurances USDA was interested in preserving the U.S. Food for Peace program and the McGovern-Dole Food for Education program in wake of the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Hollis said she’d spoken with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio about the programs, which had for decades relied on surplus U.S.-grown food to save lives abroad. She said USDA would comply if Congress passed and Trump signed a bill authorizing the transfer.
“No surprisingly,” she said, “I don’t want to get ahead of my boss.”
Moran said the U.S. food programs were “the difference between life and death for millions of people around the world and has made circumstances better for farmers here at home.”
He argued the mission of international food distribution was increasingly urgent with more than 730 million people facing chronic hunger.
“It was Kansas farmers who came up with the idea for Food for Peace as a moral and commonsense solution to prevent excess American food from going to waste and using it to feed the hungry across the globe,” he said.
