By U.S. Rep. Jim Banks
Republican Party, Indiana District 3
A nation cannot stand on its own without food and energy security.
Luckily, our nation is blessed with an abundant supply of the best, cleanest and most cost-efficient food and energy in the world. That is, as long as Washington bureaucrats stay out of the way.
Following Joe Biden’s out-of-control spending, deceptively dubbed as the “American Rescue Plan,” farm interest rates have risen at the fastest pace in more than 40 years.
Since January 2021, fuel and fertilizer prices have jumped 60 to 130 percent. That’s on top of the record costs of land, labor, and equipment, to name a few.
Adding insult to injury, radical climate activists have declared war on farmers and are actively working against the interest of working-class families across the country.
From their desperate push to fill beautiful farmland with unreliable solar panels made in China, to proposing a ban on all diesel and gas engines in the next decade, proponents of Joe Biden and AOC’s radical green agenda are increasing our dependence on communist China and weakening America’s national security. And they’re doing it on purpose.
I don’t need to tell you all this – you are living it every day. Corn and soybean farmers in Indiana are on the front lines of the battle for the future of our nation.
Do we want to be a nation that produces enough corn and soybeans for the Americans and the rest of the world, or do we want to sacrifice U.S. agricultural dominance for a “green” agenda based in hysteria and pseudoscience?
I am for the former.
When I was first elected in 2016, I led the Indiana delegation in support of President Trump’s proposal to rescind the EPA’s anti-farmer “Water of the United States” (WOTUS). And just this summer, I was an original cosponsor of legislation to authorize the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to review and block land purchases by hostile enemy nations and make U.S. food security a priority in its national reviews.
I am not a farmer and won’t pretend to be. But as the Congressional representative for Northeast Indiana and an Afghanistan veteran, I believe America is worth fighting for, and I will always do so alongside you to protect our nation’s food and energy security.
