Roberts Video Criticizing Obama Immigration Speech November 21, 2014

Residency Hearing Monday for Pat Roberts May 12, 2014

— A Kansas board is preparing to consider claims that U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts should be barred from seeking re-election this year because he is not truly a resident of the state.

The State Objections Board meeting Monday was prompted by objections from four northeast Kansas residents to listing the three-term senator on the Aug. 5 Republican primary ballot.

GOP tea party challenger Milton Wolf contends that Roberts lives in Alexandria, Va., where the senator owns a home. Roberts and his wife own a duplex unit in Dodge City but rent it out.

Roberts says he lives and pays taxes in Kansas.

The Objections Board is made up of Secretary of State Kris Kobach, Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer and Attorney General Derek Schmidt. All three have endorsed Roberts.

Pat Roberts Bumped From Top GOP Spot on Ag Committee January 4, 2013

Roberts

Kansas Senator Pat Roberts is losing his post as the highest Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee.
It’s the second hard blow to the farm state’s agri-industry in a matter of weeks.
West Kansas Congressman Tim Huelskamp was kicked on the House Agriculture Committee last month after a dispute with House Speaker John Boehner and other GOP House Leaders.
Roberts says Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran has decided to take the top slot. Based on the senate’s Senority system, says Roberts, that’s Cochran’s right.
“No matter whether I hold the gavel, or whether I am the ranking member or whether I am a senior member, agriculture has always been a top priority of my efforts in public service. Nothing will change that,” Roberts said.
The Kansas Senator says he’ll keep a seat on the Ag panel. He also is a member of the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate Ethics Committee.
Roberts says he’ll remain the highest Republican on the Senate’s Rules Committee. He expects that committee to have an even more important role in the new Congress that was sworn in Thursday.
“This committee will become increasingly important as I expect to play a very vigorous role in defense of minority rights, which are under attack by the Democrat Majority Leader, as well as top line issues like campaign finance reform and federal election law,” Roberts said.

Roberts Praises Farm Bill Now on Hill, Blunt & McCaskill Join In June 13, 2012

St. Joseph News press via Johncombest.com:
Kansas Senator Pat Roberts is praising the new Farm Bill now churning through Congress as the kid of reform Congress always talks about but rarely delivers.
The St. Joseph News press reports, ““This is a reform bill,” Mr. Roberts said on the Senate floor last week. “No other committee, in the House or Senate, has voluntarily undertaken programmatic and funding reforms at this level in this budget climate.”
Mr. Roberts said the legislation rolls four commodity programs into one, streamlines 23 conservation programs into 13, eliminates five forestry programs and squeezes out 16 different line items in rural development programs.
Karla Thieman, who grew up on a Lafayette County cattle farm before going to Washington for three years to serve as a staff member on the Senate Agriculture Committee, said the initial directive in crafting the bill was to ferret out program redundancies, find resource savings and keep the farm safety net in place.
“We didn’t want to lose the tools in the toolbox,” said Ms. Thieman, back in Missouri to direct the Democratic Party Coordinated Campaign. “We created a more user-friendly Farm Bill.”
Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill said the reforms extend to the way agricultural producers get federal assistance.
“We’re going to stop paying farmers direct payments when prices are high,” the Democratic senator said Tuesday. “We’re going to make sure that there is an important safety net under our producers. We’re going to limit the amount of payments that farmers can receive.”
Not every observer celebrated the reforms and acknowledged the savings. Christine Harbin, a policy analyst for Americans for Prosperity, said Farm Bill spending almost doubled between 2008 and 2011, up to $98 billion a year, including a steep increase in the federal food stamp program.
“Lawmakers are now patting themselves on the back for locking in those huge increases and then cutting a little bit around the edges,” she wrote in The Hill.
Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt said if the new Farm Bill goes into effect on Oct. 1, savings will begin to be realized and agricultural interests will have more certainty about federal programs.
“Every day the Farm Bill is extended, you’re extending a Farm Bill that spends a couple of billion more dollars annually,” the Republican senator said in a conference call last week.
He remains cautiously optimistic the measure will be approved.
“We’ll just see,” Mr. Blunt said. “This is not a Congress that’s shown a lot of ability to get things done.”

Politico: Farm Belt Braces for Budget Cuts October 13, 2011

Politico reports:

Under pressure to cut farm subsidies, Agriculture Committee leaders in Congress are closing in on a 10-year savings target near $23 billion, about a third less than what House Republicans and President Barack Obama had proposed but still a significant change.

No final announcement has been made, but the bipartisan leadership met Tuesday evening, and three lawmakers told POLITICO that they expected the final savings to be in $23 billion range.

Upon returning to the Senate floor on Wednesday, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), who chairs the Senate panel, huddled at length with Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), a major force as well on farm policy.

Kansas Senator Pat Roberts is the ranking Republican on the Senate Ag panel. He and Stabenow have held hearings on the Farm Bill in various parts of the country, including Kansas.

Stabenow’s goal — together with House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) — has been to come up with a single recommendation this week for the new joint debt committee, charged with putting together a $1.2 trillion deficit reduction package next month.

“Chairwoman Stabenow has been working closely with farmers, House committee leaders and members of her own committee to develop a bipartisan set of recommendations that both strengthen American agriculture and contribute to deficit reduction,” her spokesman said. “They are continuing to discuss options and determine a final agreement, and aim to send a letter to the Joint Committee by Friday outlining their recommendations.”

Indeed, the precise assumptions behind the $23 billion target could still be changed and are complex in their own right. But to achieve that level of savings almost certainly means the end of the current system of direct cash payments costing almost $5 billion annually.

With high crop prices and net farm income predicted to jump 31 percent this year, those payments have become hard to defend politically, since much of the money goes to households earning more than $100,000. But the agriculture committees have been anxious to retain some of the savings to help finance new forms of crop insurance to protect growers against a rapid drop in revenues.