U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown and other Capitol Hill colleagues visited Zanesville Monday to talk about rural issues affecting the area. WOSU reports the forum was a stark contrast to other recent health care town hall-style meetings.
Unlike other town hall meetings held this month by members of Congress, the mood of the forum was composed and respectful.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack joined Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown and 18th District Congressman Democrat Zack Space at the Muskingum County Welcome Center.
The forum was meant to address challenges faced by rural communities. One attendee raised concern about the lack of broadband access in the area. This man says he has lobbied for five years to get broadband internet to the community.
"The kids in our district, less than fifty percent have broadband at home, so we're raising a generation that's at a competitive disadvantage. This is a regulated industry. We're facing the same issue as in the 1930s when the utilities would not provide electricity to rural America. Why isn't government stepping in and simply stepping in and simply taking those same steps that brought electricity to rural America to bring broadband to rural America?"
Secretary Vilsack said he hopes to use 75 percent of the $9 billion provided under the Recovery and Reinvestment Act for internet expansion to rural areas.
"The past problems with broadband, I think, is the resources have been used to create competition. But that has left out a lot of American, particularly rural communities," Vilsack said.
Space said Ohio has applied for up to $100 million of stimulus money to get internet access for most of southeastern Ohio.
"It's every bit as crucial to our infrastructural development and our economic development and our cultural development as is the creation of new roads and the creation of new water systems, building new schools," Space said.
Another attendee raised the issue of trade and how it affects local farmers.
"You know we're importing milk products while our dairy farmers are suffering. It seems like we're allowing a few producers, corporate conglomerates, to profit from our trade policies at the detriment of our food sovereignty, other nations' food sovereignty, our labor standards, our environment, our family farmers," the attendee said. Vilsack said trade is complicated and gave this example. "When we tried to increase the dairy export assistance program, that would the program that would allow our export of dairy to be on a competitive basis with some of our European friends who are subsidizing their dairy industry pretty effectively, it took months to get that through the process because of the trade agreements. So it's complicated. It's complicated," the secretary said.
Vilsack added that more country buy American products than we do from other countries. But Brown added Vilsack's statement only applies to the agricultural industry.
"We have a $2 billion a day trade deficit. $2 billion every single day. Money goes out of the country, more than coming in, and cutting it to the quick," Brown said.
Another issue affecting rural communities is access to health care. As Congress returns to Capitol Hill after Labor Day the health care debate continues. Vilsack said 55 percent of farmers have other jobs off the farm - and he said health care is the reason. Rural communities, Vilsack said, miss out on good health care, and he hopes a bipartisan bill will pass.
"So I don't know why anybody, regardless of what their party affiliation is, who cares about rural America, I have no reason why they would want to be a defender of the status quo. For rural Americans you lose out on every proposition: access, affordability and quality," Vilsack said.