The Garden City Telegram
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Farm Bill, war, No Child topics of tour
Published 8/21/2007 in News : Politics By Stephanie Farley
TRIBUNE -- U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, who's been making his way across the state gaining public input and listening to concerns, found himself in Tribune Monday discussing issues from the 2007 Farm Bill to the war in Iraq.
Roberts has hit the southwest Kansas towns of Sublette, Scott City, Leoti, Lakin, Ulysses, Johnson City and Hugoton since starting his annual listening tour and was in Cimarron, Syracuse and Tribune Monday. He'll be at the Lane County Courthouse, 144 S. Lane in Dighton, from 3:15 to 4:15 p.m. Wednesday.
Roberts said Monday that the listening tour gave him personal contact with the state's residents and that there was no meeting during the tour in which a different concern and/or opinion didn't come up. He told the group of about 20 gathered at the Greeley County Courthouse that the war in Iraq, health care, immigration and 2007 Farm Bill had been the issues consistently addressed during the tour but that the one-hour segments were open to anything.
Roberts jokingly took a chair and placed it between him and the group, saying the meeting could be "like lions in a cage." But no heated discussion was heard by the group.
Wade Dixon, who serves as a district magistrate judge in Greeley County and southwest Kansas, asked Roberts if it was a possibility that social programs would be separated from agriculture programs in the Farm Bill to give the public a better, more realistic idea of what actually goes to agriculture.
Roberts said he and others worried that by separating the programs, possibly placing them in different bills, that the Farm Bill would lose support without the groups supporting the other social issues and programs.
"But they all eat," Dixon said, with Roberts saying farm programs existed to aid producers when Mother Nature and other events out of their control occurred but that some legislators lacked the understanding of that fact.
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U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts spoke Monday to a group of about 20 people gathered in Tribune for a segment of the senator's annual listening tour to gather public input and listen to concerns on various issues raning from immigration and the war in Iraq to the 2007 Farm Bill and health care.
A version of the 2007 Farm Bill passed through the House of Representatives and is moving on to the Senate, and Roberts told Dixon and the group he was going to work to improve the bill for the agricultural industry.
He said agriculture and legislation were at a crossroads, with producers seeing less and less in the way of money and programs.
"What can we do to affect that?" Dixon asked.
"Sound off," Roberts replied.
Roberts also touched on the war in Iraq and No Child Left Behind, saying he agreed with the goals of No Child Left Behind and voted for it. He said the Legislature would need to allow more flexibility in the act, as well as measure student progress and consider the student population.
Roberts ends his tour Saturday at the Town & Country Kitchen in Norton.
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