Congressional Visits

On June 24th Yankee visited Congressional offices in Washington, DC. Participating were: Chairperson Paul Gingue, former Chairperson Paul Doton, Bob Smith and me. Bob Smith is a senior vice president of First Pioneer Farm Credit who assists several associations with government relations.

We visited people in eight Congressional offices:

• Jim Gauthier in Sen. Judd Gregg's office (and briefly met Sen. Gregg)
• Todd Schulte in Rep. Scott Murphy's office
• Sara Dewey in Sen. Jeanne Shaheen's office
• Sen. Bernie Sanders and Janko Mitric
• Rep. Peter Welch and Jake Oster
• Sarah Levin in Rep. Paul Hodes' office
• Adam Robbins in Rep. Carol Shea-Porter's office
• Brian Baenig in Sen. Patrick Leahy's office

Our main message this year was that we are meeting the needs of our customers and doing business as usual, notwithstanding the financial crisis last fall and the current downturn affecting many of our customers, especially in the dairy and timber industries. We are lending money; our financial results are good; we continue to pay patronage refunds; and the Farm Credit System has not needed any government assistance. This message was well received.

Earlier this month President Obama released a proposal for Financial Regulatory Reform. This plan proposes to reform the regulation of financial institutions, but leaves for future consideration any action relating to the GSEs. Farm Credit is not mentioned. We conveyed the message that as this proposal evolves, we believe that Farm Credit can best continue to fulfill our Congressional mandate and meet the needs of our customers if we remain a system of farmer-owned cooperatives, under the regulatory supervision of the Farm Credit Administration and with Congressional oversight remaining with the House and Senate Agriculture Committees.

We also discussed farm labor issues and the dairy industry. We provided each office with a copy of the Northeast Dairy Farm Summary published last month.

UPDATE: Received this photo from Rep. Welch's office: