Sen. Roberts gives update on farm bill, tariffs and immigration

Garden City, KS(westernkansasnews.com) U.S. Senator Pat Roberts gave a legislative update Thursday to Garden City Chamber of Commerce members at the Clarion Inn Conference Center.

Roberts started out the event by discussing the recent senate and house farm bills.

“The paramount issue for us is to get a farm bill done so we can provide farmers, ranchers, growers and everyone involved in agriculture certainty and predictability so they know they have a farm bill regardless of what happens with trade policy or the weather they will have crop insurance and protection,” said Roberts.

Roberts also said that when he first met with President Trump the first thing he asked for help with was crop insurance. The committee will begin working on the farm bill on September 5. He then segued to trade policy and President Trump’s tariffs.

“I know the President is working hard to get that done and he’s using tariffs to make his point,” said Roberts, “the problem with tariffs is the country usually retaliates and they came right at agriculture, which is what’s been happening to virtually every crop that we have in the country.”

Roberts also said that while appreciates what the President is trying to do with protecting farmers proposing a $12 billion aid program.

“We don’t want aid we want trade, but we’re in a situation now where we’ll take the aid, the implementation and how that will work we don’t know yet,” said Roberts.

Later during the question and answer section Roberts addressed immigration and “the wall”.

“The President made what I thought was a very important gesture to all those that are involved with immigration when he walked into a room with people who are directly involved and said let’s not talk about DACA that’s 800,000 people, let’s talk about 1.6 million people who are here illegally  and he said why don’t we give them citizenship after ten years and also make them adhere to regular laws, but he said I want border security and I want the wall and there’s the division,” said Roberts.

He also said that he though the most recent congressional session was one of the most accomplished that he had been a part of.