House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington seeks to expand rural healthcare, weighs in on future farm bill

Yahoo

24-03-2025

BIG COUNTRY, Texas () – District 19 U.S. House Representative and House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington recently discussed several key issues impacting the nation's fiscal and security policies, particularly the budget resolution and its potential consequences for future fiscal years.
The resolution, endorsed by President Trump, stands in contrast to the Senate's version, according to Arrington.
'There's an annual budget that we passed that actually reduced spending will be 10s of billions of dollars over the budget window. We also redirected monies to border security in defense, and we rescinded wasteful monies because it was part of the IRA Inflation Reduction Act, expansion of the IRS, and we didn't think that was appropriate. We sent it back to the Treasury to pay down our deficit,' Arrington explained. 'The budget reconciliation still comes out of my budget committee and is under our leadership, and we shepherded it through the process. It's the principal legislative vehicle for advancing the America first agenda. It's got all the economic policies, tax, regulation, energy. It's got restoring fiscal sanity in Washington and staving off a debt crisis by reducing wasteful and unnecessary spending.'
Congressman Jodey Arrington visits ICE Detention Facility in Anson
Arrington highlighted that the budget reconciliation is now in the Senate.
'It's got monies for the military and readiness and modernizing the military, also, as the President is at breakneck speed now to enforce the immigration law, secure our border and deport people who should not be here. He needs resources to do that,' Arrington said. 'That has passed, not only my committee, but we passed it out of the house with a one vote margin, we could only stand to lose one Republican, but it's in the Senate now, and I'm encouraging my Senate colleagues to take up the budget resolution, start writing the policies that will meet those budget targets in the resolution, get it on the President's desk so that these laws and policies can be the reality of our Country, bringing the cost down, securing our border, making America safer, more prosperous.'
He views this resolution as potentially 'the most consequential law and set of policies in modern history.'
'It's a blueprint for the America First policies, and it runs the gamut. Again. You've got economic policies, fiscal policies, security all in one legislative tool. This was the same tool the Democrats used to pass the quote, inflation Reduction Act, the 2 trillion American Relief Act in 2021 so it's the most consequential piece of legislation that will occur in the four years of the Trump administration,' Arrington added.
In late 2024, Arrington played a crucial role in securing emergency disaster relief for farmers, aiming to stabilize the agriculture economy.
'We don't have a farm bill. It happens every five years, we passed ours out of the house. Our Democrat colleagues did not return the favor, and so we had to do basically a stop gap measure with this economic assistance. It was roughly 10 billion,' Arrington shared. 'We got the resources necessary to get us through this cycle, but we've got to get a new farm bill that reflects the economic realities and a safety net that reflects those realities, mainly inflation. Farmers have seen fuel, seed, fertilizer, all their input costs have gone through the roof because the cost-of-living crisis not just affecting our families. It's affecting our mom-and-pop shops. It affects our family farmers.'
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Additionally, Arrington has introduced two bills aimed at improving rural healthcare: the Telehealth Expansion Act and the Second Chances for Rural Hospitals Act.
'In order to have the next generation of farmer, rancher, energy producer in rural America, their families have to have access to basic care, and one way to do that is leverage technology and make sure that that they have access to specialty care. It would be too expensive to have that fixed cost in a rural hospital, but they can pipe that service in with consults like nurses who are basically facilitating those engagements,' Arrington said. 'The second piece is we basically do away with some of the federal mandates. One in particular is for rural hospitals, because rural hospitals have been forced to have inpatient beds, even if they can't afford them or don't utilize them. Some of these rural hospitals in these small towns simply need an emergency room and a clinic… Some hospitals have had to close. This bill would actually allow them to reopen under the rural emergency hospital designation, and you're getting bipartisan support for this.'
Arrington also discussed the significant progress in immigration enforcement.
'What I heard from our folks at the ice facility in Anson is that year over year, they have twice as many people detained. That means we're actually enforcing the laws and keeping people off of the streets and out of our neighborhoods until we determine their intent and whether they have a legitimate asylum claim, and if they don't, then they're going to be deported,' Arrington shared. 'The other issue is the bureaucracy. The ICE folks would say that they couldn't get decisions made in the previous administration. Actually, said that DOGE is cutting through that red tape allowing them to get the answers they need to make the decisions on the ground. Lastly, you've got the ICE folks feeling a sense of morale increase because they are doing the job that they signed up for, which is providing security for the American people before they were hamstrung. Now, as they told me, the rhetoric in Washington matches what is happening on the ground, and these guys are happy because they signed up for a very important job, and this administration is empowering them to do that.'
He also addressed improvements in the efficiency of ICE operations.
You mentioned Doge the Department of government efficiency on Tuesday in a report with our Tobin Smith and how its efforts are impacting the day-to-day jobs, the jobs of ICE agents. You know, I know you briefly touched on that. Can you provide us with some examples of what you're hearing from these agents and how it's really making their job, I guess better, if you will. Well, there's the
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Arrington highlighted the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and its role in improving accountability across agencies.
'There's the famous email that went out by Elon Musk to every government worker saying, Name five things that you did this week or last week. One of the responses there at the ICE facility was, apprehend, detain, apprehend, detain, apprehend, detain. I suspect that's music to the ears of President Trump and Elon Musk and the administration, because that's exactly what they feel like,' Arrington explained. 'The American people hired them to do reverse course on the lawlessness, the catch and release and the deluge of crime, criminals, gang members, drugs coming into our country, but the sense that I got was because there is actually accountability in Washington for those senior leaders of these various agencies and departments, that people are actually being empowered to do their job so they can perform on behalf of their agency and what they were hired to do. But DOGE broadly uncovered a lot of waste, I think they've now saved in the tens of billions of dollars.'
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