Welcome to the Hot Dish. I'm Bethany Brookshire and I'm thrilled to present this
special episode giving you the highlights from this week's Rural Progress Summit from
the One Country Project. You'll be able to see all of these panels on our
YouTube channel soon, so keep following the One Country Project to find out when
they're available. The Summit began with a panel on Trump's trade
war and the impact it could have on our economy. While the panelists,
including former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy and Gary Wertish of
the Minnesota Farmers Union, agreed that the trade war will hurt
average Americans. Jason Furman of the Harvard Kennedy School
stressed the compounding impact of the Big Beautiful Bill. If you look
at the deficit as. A share of the economy, that's the way economists do it.
So you can compare it over time. It's more than 6% of
GDP right now that is larger than any time in our history
except World War II, the financial crisis and COVID.
There are good reasons for borrowing all those times. There is not a good reason
to borrow right now. And now that we passed this law. That
deficit is likely to go up. Relative to our economy, not
down. I don't think there's going to be a crisis where we literally can
borrow anything. We're just going to have to pay more for that borrowing.
And when you pay more for that borrowing, then your deficit and debt go up
more quickly. Of course, agriculture was a major topic at the
summit, with Senator Joe Donnelly leading a discussion about the Farm Bill.
Scott Marlow, who's been on the front lines of farm policy development for
30 years, pointed out that many of the challenges rural
communities face are rooted in decades old farm
we have to acknowledge. That since World War II and really since the
Reagan Administration, the underlying frame of our programs,
the underlying frame of our policy has been one of efficiency. It's been
one of driving towards greater and greater efficiency of get big
or get out. If you and I are both facing the question of get
bigger or get out, we both can't get big, someone.
Has to go out. And so the challenge is that with
that underlying frame to the safety net in a lot of our programs, and it
doesn't matter what the crisis is or the issue is
that we try to address and we try and get at, as long as we
stay with that efficiency frame and don't bring resilience into the conversation,
don't bring the human costs and the costs on rural communities into the conversation,
whatever that crisis is, whatever the issue is, it will
continue to drive towards fewer and fewer people. On the land and
fewer and fewer. People in rural communities. And Jennifer Fahy,
co Executive Director of Farm Aid, noted that for farmers, this
isn't new. I was not involved in Farm Aid during the farm
crisis. But what I'm hearing from farmers
is. That what we're experiencing now is very
familiar. And as you say, so much is out of farmers control,
from weather and crop failures and pest and disease
outbreaks to prices and interest rates related to market
volatility and trade disruptions. This year has probably been
unprecedented in terms of the uncertainty that farmers have. Been dealt
and continue to be dealt, in addition to the funding freezes
and program cancellations. And so far
on our hotline, which we have operated since 1985, more than half
of the callers are indicating that they are calling financially
distressed. Education was also on the agenda, with a focus on the
nationwide attacks on public education. Award winning journalist Laura
Pappano described the impact Head Start programs can have as
Ronny Lau with the National Education association described the impact
budget cuts are. Having on them, Head Start changes lives.
One of the students that I have mentored over the years
would not be where he is today if he did not have Head Start
is from Mississippi. His mother had him when he was, when she
was 15, but she got Head Start involved. He became
a voracious reader and ended up going to Yale
where I met him. And recently he gave me
a phone call when he earned his Ph.D. and he is now
an education policy person in D.C. and
I said to him, I said, you know, your son will have a very different
journey than you did because of the start of Head Start. And he does
have a charming, delightful little munchkin of a son. We've already seen
five out of 12 of the regional offices that lead a lot of Head Start
implementation already close. Up based on this Administration's priorities.
So like I said, I think this is a fundamental attack on our nation's future.
And I'm not sure who actually benefits out of this.
John Rogers, professor at UCLA's School of Education and Information
Studies, pointed out the unique place public schools have in our nation.
The brand of public schools is democracy. It's
about serving everybody. It's about
enabling members of the community. To see the strengths and
virtues of. People that are different from them and. That they can learn from other
folks. That are different from them and that. We all can work together and build
a shared future. Private schools can't do that. Iowa State
Representative Adam Zabner also noted a disadvantage public schools
have in the voucher Debate, though Laura Pappano acknowledged that they need
to change. Private schools can organize more
explicitly around the families who are. Who are
sending their kids there. Right. Ask families to send
letters and call. Their legislators and support these voucher programs.
You know, public schools obviously can't really do that, and so there's
sort of. A structural disadvantage there that I haven't. Really figured out what to
do with. Public schools may need to operate a little bit
differently than they have in the past. A long time ago, they were
virtually the only game in town. And, you know, when we talk
about competition, I really don't believe that vouchers create
academic excellence or competition in any way
whatsoever. But what they do is
they do make public schools need to think a little
bit differently about how they communicate, how they gather,
how they frame, what it is that they're providing, because private
schools do that. And it's part of their, you know, fundraising. Right? It's part of
their philanthropy. Maybe the philanthropy for public
schools is building community and
allegiance and support. The panel on rural health care
featured Jeanne Lambrew from the Century Foundation, who warned of an
impending shock to rural Americans. The Affordable Care Act,
which has covered 2.8 million people in rural
America. We shouldn't forget that this fall, people
in rural areas who get Affordable Care Act premium tax credit
is going to. Lose a significant amount, significantly more than.
Urban areas, because of the lack of. Inclusion of
this extender in the tax cut bill. That's going to be significant.
So I just hope that we come out of this period
with a renewed sense of community that oftentimes generates from.
Rural areas, but spreads nationwide. Kevin Stansbury, CEO of
Lincoln Community Hospital in Colorado, pointed out some of the ways rural
hospitals are placed at a disadvantage by the system. In the metro
areas, hospitals are paid. At a rate of approximately
240% of Medicare in the rural hospitals on the
Eastern Plains were paid on an average of
139% of Medicare. It's a market
imbalance. I can call a large insurance
company. And say, hey, we need to do. Something about my rates,
and it takes them a while to get back to me. If I'm a big
system in the. City and I own 15 hospitals, that's. A very
different conversation. Dr. Tom Dean, who practiced medicine for
43 years in his hometown of Wessington Springs, South Dakota,
expressed concerns about the impact our complicated health care system
has on physicians. I am concerned about the
overall dysfunction in our health system in general,
which is simply dysfunctional.
Our costs are too high. Vast amounts of our
resources go to administration just
justifying the bills that come in. And
that has placed a big burden on physicians. They
the demands for documentation, the
administrative demands. I've told a number of
people that my last several years in practice were the hardest
I had. Not because the patients were any difficult. It was
the administrative requirements,
the burden of documentation. And
that has led so many physicians to
either retire early or just be burned out and fed up with
the whole thing. The highlight of Day One was, of course, Heidi's
conversation with Secretary Pete Buttigieg who talked about the importance of
face to face interaction to bring people together. I so often think
about the human. In person 3D in real life
relationships that transcend those partisan and social divides.
And I think this is actually one area where rural America has a lot
of to offer because people who live in
smaller communities often have more
overlapping circles of belonging because
so many families that straddle political divides also have
neighbors or faith communities that can get off of the kind
of pre sorted concentric circles that we all live in
with our online identities. I think we were always better able
to see each other as three dimensional people in those processes and
than when we're behind a keyboard commenting on what's going on nationally.
And the Secretary shared some inspiring words about the future of the Democratic
Party. We can paint a picture of what it looks like when government
actually works for you. It's not about making it bigger or smaller. It's about making
sure that you get. Up in the morning and you're breathing cleaner air because your
government did a. Good job of keeping that under control. And you're on a good
road to get to where you need to go because you had a
successful infrastructure policy and you've got a good school
to drop your kid off because we actually invest in education instead
of cutting the Department of Education out. And you go to a job
that you know you can count on because you have policymakers
who care about employment in your area. And I could go on and on, but
it's, it's that different and better everyday life. The
second day of the Summit was just as exciting. The day started with a focus
on paid family and medical leave. Representative Chrissy Houlahan, an
Air Force veteran, engineer, entrepreneur and educator, reminded the
audience that the United States is unusual. The United States
is woefully behind in its understanding and
appreciation for the importance of paid leave
of all kinds, not just for families, but also medical leave, as you mentioned,
because there are always. Situations that are happening in families, either.
To your parents, as you've mentioned, or to your children or to yourself.
But we are one of only seven. Nations remaining that don't have a paid.
Leave policy of one form or another. And Carling
McManus, a small business owner from West Virginia, explained both the
value her company gains by offering paid leave as well as the burden
it places on businesses when there is no government policy to support the
benefits. We made policies that allowed
eight weeks of paid leave, that we
pay 100% of the salary while that employee is either out on
maternity leave or caring for a loved one or themselves,
themselves during a medical crisis. And it
is a really important policy. It has attracted a lot
of talent. We might be in West Virginia, but we're competing for
employees at the global level. We do
do contract work with a number of individuals who are out of state and
sometimes out of country, because remote work is a real reality for
us. And so these policies stretch beyond West
Virginia, and they attract people that I know I can count
on their talent. They can count on me as their
employer to care for them when they are facing a challenge.
But this is not without costs.
When we started hiring in 2019, we
implemented the policy, and since then, we've
had six utilizations of it. And it has cost my company
on average about $21,000 a year.
So it is expensive. It is really expensive. It's values
aligned. We're 100% in support of it, but we're all by ourselves
paying for this. People ask me, how do you afford it? You're such
a small business. I say, well, we make less money. Our
own Joel Heitkamp spoke with Phil Snape from Impact Social about the
sentiments rural Americans are expressing online. People are saying, well,
you know, I was going to buy that new tractor, but I'm. I'm. No way
I'm going to do that now. I'm going to fix up the old one. I
was going to get the combine sorted out again. I'm not going to do that.
Am I going to sow that particular crop or that particular crop? I'm not sure
because I'm not sure where the tariffs are going to hit. So as a consequence,
you see a lot of people in rural communities sitting on their hands, and they're
waiting, and they can't afford to wait because that's not the nature of what they
do. But they're afraid to make a move. And this is the legacy
of what has been a very haphazard economic policy
all the way through. We see people talking about things like,
say, if something is fixed in the power line, they say the people are
driving on the road and thinking, there were 10 guys fixing that power line last
week and now there's only one, and it's a white guy.
What's happening? So they see people sort of disappearing
from the workplace, from their environment, et cetera. And that's
having an effect because some people think it's a good thing because they're saying,
well, this is great, because it means there's going to be even more jobs for
everybody and unemployment is going to go up. Whereas other people are saying, well, how
are things going to get fixed? And they're also saying, what's going to be impact
on inflation? Because if all the people
who normally do lawns and the jobs which you're talking about
suddenly disappear and then other people come in, then the cost of that's going to
go up. And also, how many people. If you start literally throwing
hundreds of thousands of millions of people out of the country, who's going to do
those jobs? So there is a fear factor as well as who's going to do
the jobs and. And is it going to increase prices? Senator Donnelly spoke with
Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget,
about the GOP's Big Beautiful Bill and its impact on our
nation's future. It really concerns me when I see parties marching in
lockstep. It's kind of scary to me because. People represent
different parts of the country, different level along the political
ideology, different spectrums, different levels of conservatism or
progressive or, like, you could think one thing about foreign policy, another
thing about economic policy. But when you see everybody falling in.
Line and voting the way the President. Tells them, that means they're not putting the
interests of their constituents first. And I would say on things like. The debt, it
means you're putting political. Interests ahead of national interests. And I know
this issue is hard, and I know the solutions are really difficult politically,
but if you care about leaving an economy that's stronger for the next
generation, you cannot borrow your way to prosperity.
We will borrow our way to a serious fiscal reckoning that will be
harmful across the board economically for American
families in terms of national security and absolutely for our future
generations. Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky couldn't join the summit
in person, but he sent a prerecorded video. Here's some of what he had to
say. The actions of the Trump administration are providing a huge
opportunity for Democrats to. To go out and regain the trust of the
American people, to be the party of common sense, common ground,
and getting things done. To do that, we have to
talk to people and not at them. And we have to
explain our why. For me, my why is
my faith. It's why as governor, I restored voting rights to almost
200,000 Kentuckians because second chances are our
responsibility and our calling. I removed the statue of Jefferson
Davis from our state Capitol because a glaring symbol of bigotry and
division does not belong in any capitol in our country. And it's
why I made Juneteenth an executive branch holiday for the first time in
Kentucky's history. I vetoed four anti choice bills
and I vetoed every single piece of anti
LGBTQ legislation that came to my desk, including
the nastiest anti LGBTQ bill in the country. And
I vetoed it in my reelection year. I did it because I believe
all children are children of God. I knew I'd get pushback,
but some things are worth losing over. But I also got a lot of
Kentuckians telling me while they might not agree with me, they knew
I was doing what I thought was right because I communicated
my why and it gave people the grace and the space to
maybe disagree but understand where I was coming from.
Democrats can regain the faith of the American people with a relentless
focus on the core concerns of our hard working families. And
that focus must be backed up by actual results and proven
effective governing. We have to be the party that
delivers. People need to see us get our boots dirty to get out in
their communities again and again because showing up tells people
you care. In the next election we must win the gut check
about which party will make life a little better and make paying the
bills a little easier. Wisconsin Secretary of State Sarah
Godlewski led an informative conversation about the future of tribal
communities. Jerilyn Church, CEO of Great Plains Tribal
Health, explained how they improved outcomes by regaining
sovereignty. We run Oyate Health center that was.
Previously run by Indian Health Service and we
assume management of what was formerly. Sioux San to become Oyate
Health Center. And, and what we saw is
in. That process we have
improved access to health care. We have
generated more revenue than Indian. Health
Service had previously. And Skya Ducheneaux, executive
director of Akiptan, a Native American community development financial
institution focused on agriculture, explained the return on investment
of investing in land resilience. A lot of these cuts to some of these
programs like let's again quit looking at them as expenses
versus investments. If we can put more investments
to make our land more resilient during all this
extremely these extreme weather patterns that we're having that
reduces the disaster assistance that happens
afterwards. If we are able to make upfront investments, our
ROI is going to be reduced disaster
costs. Day two ended with great conversations about the threat to
public lands and how that threat was removed from the Big Beautiful
Bill. Tracy Stone-Manning, president of the Wilderness Society,
had this to say. We have the support of the American people.
People from all corners of this country, all
stripes, all political stripes, all genders, all ages, said, whoa, whoa, whoa,
hold on. No, no, no. I love my public lands
in ways. That I don't think that either Senator. Lee
or the Administration expected.
And here's the thing. They're not going to stop saying that. They're going to continue
to fight for it if they have to. And that's what gives me confidence, right.
That we're in such a divided country right now.
And the unity around public lands for me is
a path back to reminding.
Ourselves how to work together, how to govern for this country
and how to. Pass on this incredible heritage that we. Have in,
in something called public lands. And Senator Martin Heinrich of New
Mexico added this. We heard a couple of things consistently.
One that, don't worry, we're not selling your national parks. And the
other was, these are a bunch of vacant lands. And,
you know, to a Westerner, those vacant lands are
the places you can actually run your bird dog off leash
and carry a gun. And, you know, it's kind of like telling
somebody from Iowa or North Dakota or Georgia,
don't worry, we're just going to sell a few lands around
your favorite deer stand because they're being underutilized.
And so they just missed the argument completely.
It took something as unifying as public lands to really
pull a bipartisan coalition out of the Rocky
Mountains that ended. Up stopping this thing. And it was because
the breadth of people who cared from every state
in the union was so strong. I mean, we had, we had the
RV industry and the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable and all the
hunting and fishing groups and, you know, Johnny Morris at Bass Pro
penning letters. We had all these influencers
that, that, you know, were successful at generating
a mountain of calls into
the Senate offices. It was that unifying. The third day
of the Rural Progress Summit was just as interesting as the first two. It began
with a conversation about rural broadband, which focused in part on the
role connectivity played in the recent Texas floods. Heidi asked
Dave Wright, policy director at Spectrum for the Future, about the impact
of a limited number of carriers in rural areas and the importance of local
control. When you have historic level disasters.
And I'd certainly say the Kern County stuff in Texas,
you know, rises to that level. I'm thinking Katrina and, and
other things. You know, oftentimes the,
the outages and the disruption to service can, can, you
know, this isn't a matter of hours. We're talking days, weeks. Yeah.
Sometimes months. Right. So you know,
what we've seen in many of those cases is. Yes. I mean, the.
To. To their credit, you know, AT&T, T Mo[bile] and Verizon, they, they get in
there and you know, if their battery backups run out of their generators
back generators run out. They get in there with, you know,
replacement systems as soon as they can. But what, but
having democratized access to spectrum and wireless
technology allows the people on the ground just to respond.
Right. Themselves. I mean, and you see, you know, people setting up WI
fi hotspots, you know, they, they happen to have a broadband connection that's working
or somebody brings in a satellite back call for, for broadband. You put a
WI fi hotspot around that and, and the community suddenly has
connectivity again. They're able to text their relatives to let them know they're alive.
Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio made some very important points during
the panel on Understanding Working Class Voters. The workers
think that together, politicians, corporations rig the system to
benefit the rich and powerful. It's hard to argue that they don't.
For all the talk from, from supposed economic
experts about the complex factors that determine wages and
prices, workers have pretty damn good intuition about it. They know
corporate greed when they see it. They know it's a big reason why they can't
get ahead and their incomes don't keep up with costs. People
talk about corporations using any excuse to raise prices. Workers
don't bring up government programs as solutions, but they talk
about the need for someone, anyone, to rein in corporate greed.
People are hungry for a vision of change will actually reign in
corporate greed. Lower their costs, create an economy where their hard work
pays off. And that's, that's where all of you come in on this, that
you can represent, you can represent rural workers.
When I say workers, I mean across the board. It's not just factory workers
or carpenters or McDonald's. It's McDonald's workers. It's everybody. But
what unites rural workers with working people all over the country
is that, that believing the system's rigged. We got to do something
about it. And we have to start by listening to them. And
that's the most important thing. Go where they are. Listen to them.
Heidi had a fascinating conversation with Mark Elias, a Nationally
recognized expert in voting rights and redistricting law, about the
ongoing impact of Project 2025 on the rights of Americans.
We only have time in this episode for a short clip, but keep following the
One Country Project to find out when the entire summit is available on our YouTube
channel. We don't have three equal branches of government. The founders never
anticipated there'd be three equal branches of government. They anticipated Congress would be the
dominant branch of government. And so like even the premise that like,
there are checks and balances, really the way the Constitution is set up
is that Congress is a check on the executive through the impeachment power,
through the conviction power, through the budget, the ability to
budget, the ability to create departments and
appropriate funds. Right. That Congress
is the dominant branch over the executive.
And frankly, they anticipated that Congress would be the dominant branch
over the judiciary. It's Congress that establishes the lower courts,
it's the Senate that confirms judges. It is Congress can
impeach and convict and remove judges. Judges, right. And neither of the other
branches have that authority with respect to members of the House and Senate. Right. So
the theory of the Constitution was that it would be a
legislatively dominant government and the
role of the President would basically be to see that, to take care of the
laws are faithfully executed. And, you know, I won't say
that for, you know, the last 200 plus years, it has worked
smoothly. You know, certainly Richard Nixon didn't abide
entirely by that regime, but by and large that
regime happened. I mean, Senator, when you were in the Senate, there
was an understanding, Democratic president, Republican President, there was an
understanding that if Congress didn't appropriate funds, the money couldn't
be spent. If Congress did appropriate money, the funds had to be
spent. And that if Congress set up an agency, that agency
existed. And what Project 2025,
at its most radical, dangerous level is,
it is not the overtaking of the executive branch, which, like I said, is
bad and bad for government and will lead to, you know,
senselessness and suffering. But it is the,
the effort to essentially say the President does not need to
follow appropriations. He can impound
funds, he can abolish departments, he can
ignore how they say agencies are to be staffed, what their
missions are like. It is essentially a trampling over
the legislative branch, which I think is the most dangerous part of
Project 2025 and which you are seeing take place across the
board. In the panel on inspiring younger Americans to run for office,
North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton talked about her
motivations for running at the age of 25. When I ran for state party
chair, people told me that you were, I was going to stick my neck out
there and my head could get lobbed off in politics. Like, if you run, you
may never. Be able to do it again. And I just, I find that to
be complete bullshit now. Right. Like, I think that
anyone should be comfortable running for office. Like,
it's okay if you lose. You know, it's okay if you stand up for your
values and the, like, what you think the direction of this party
or, you know, your district should be right now. And I would just
encourage everybody. The one thing I got told before I ran that always
stuck with me is Kelvin Stallings looking at me and being like, if you
remember your why, you will never have any regrets. And
my why was always that I wanted a party that was going to stand
up and fight back for rural North Carolina and not just cede
ground to a party that had fully endorsed white
supremacy and wanted to see the demise of our communities with their
policies. And what we just saw this last week come from
Washington, D.C. d.C. With Republicans stripping 17 million
people from health care access across our or across our country.
Wisconsin Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski added this. You
know, one of the things that my dad said to me because I was really
upset when I lost, and. I wasn't upset because of myself. I was upset
because I felt like I had let down so many people that
I was really fighting for the reason why I ran a lot
of women and girls. And this was at the height of when Roe v. Wade
was overturned and we had an 1849 Abortion Ban here in
Wisconsin. And to me, my dad looked at. Me and he goes,
Sarah, remember, failure is never fatal and success is never
final. And for you, your
public service journey is just that. And it
is going to continue to be a journey. And so I say
that to everybody here because while it might not work
out, you know, when they. When the door shuts, a window opens. And I think
that's exactly also what you have to think about in running for office.
You might not get it the first time, but you shouldn't be afraid to. Step
up and try again. In the final session about immigration in rural
America, State Senator Cesar Blanco of Texas talked about the
impacts of the GOP's mass deportation policies on the industries
in his border district. I'm right on the Texas-Mexico
border, and I represent nine counties that
stretch out from the whole western bend of Texas. It's about 25,000
square miles. The big industries
are trade, oil and gas. I represent parts of the Permian Basin, which
is some of the largest oil and gas producing counties
in the world. And agriculture and all of
it is along the Texas-Mexico border. So we deal with a lot of
the immigration policies and the approaches that this administration
has implemented which really impact our rural communities first and foremost.
There's a lot of uncertainty and there is a lot of
inconsistency with how this administration is approaching
immigration. And the challenges that we're facing is
that it's really creating consequences
in rural communities like mine.
We are already facing things like workforce
shortages. We're dealing with shortages in
agriculture, we're dealing with shortages in the oil patch
where a lot of our employees are, and then in health care.
So these policies have really
impacted those industries and
especially those aimed at broadening deportation priorities that
the administration has prioritized.
The fact that they're restricting legal pathways is also
deepening the challenges. So, you know, as you all know, when
rural employers can't find the workers that
they need, production slows down, prices
go up, and families, especially
family farms, struggle. I'll give you an example. One of the industries
in my district is the, the sheep and
mohair industry. And a lot of the workers that come
from that have the skill of sheep sharing.
Many come from Mexico. There's a lot of folks in the United States that
don't know how to do this. And a lot of our workers come in and
they're seasonal. Some stay longer. But that is a,
is a skill set that is difficult to teach. It's a skill
set that is difficult to, to teach over the long
term. And we don't have that ability to recover those
workers if they're deported. And that's a wrap for the 2025 Rural
Progress Summit. We're going to leave you with some inspiring words from
Senator Cory Booker. But first, I want to remind you to follow the One
Country Project on Bluesky, Substack and YouTube and keep listening to
the Hot Dish. While you're at it, be sure to tell your friends about us.
We'll be back with a regularly scheduled episode on Wednesday, July
23rd. Thanks for listening. And now, here's Senator Cory
Booker. It's a real honor to participate in the Rural Progress
Summit. Thank you to Heidi, my sister and. My brother Joe and the
entire team. At the One Country Project for bringing us
together. You've built something essential here, a place
where people can speak truthfully, listen carefully, and
collaborate on real solutions for rural
America. And in this current moment, with so much
at stake, your work has never been more urgent.