Finstad tackles federal issues during fair visit
U.S. Rep. Brad Finstad took a spin through the grounds of the Steele County Free Fair last week, posing for photos at the Steele County Republican Party booth and admiring local 4-Hers’ livestock.
It was a decidedly calmer appearance than the raucous reception he had received in Rochester the day before, when an Olmsted County Board meeting was cut short after protesters disrupted Finstad’s presentation on recent federal actions.
“There’s been a group that has been repeatedly intent on doing what they were doing,” he said of the incident. “I wasn’t overly surprised. I appreciate their passion but question the productivity of it.”
Finstad’s visit to southern Minnesota came about a month after the passage of President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” budget package, which the Congressman for District 1 supported.
The Farm Bill
He’s a member of the House Committee on Agriculture, which has yet to pass a new farm bill, two years after the last one expired. The committee has passed two one-year extensions to the omnibus law, which typically lasts about five years.
Sitting inside the bustling Four Seasons Centre at the state’s second-largest celebration of agriculture, Finstad addressed the issue.
“We actually passed, in the reconciliation bill, about 70% of the farm bill,” he said, using the more general term for the budget package. While acknowledging it wasn’t a complete farm bill, “what it did was allow us to clear the deck of some of the things that are critically important right now.”
Finstad was referring to what he called “risk management tools,” such as crop insurance and a doubling of the trade promotion funding.
President Donald Trump’s tariffs on agricultural imports have received mixed reactions; pork and soybean farmers have been impacted by China’s retaliatory tariffs on their products.
“We had to address the fact that we are four years into an ag-trade deficit,” Finstad said, to the tune of $50 billion last year. “We know we have to find new markets, new opportunities. The tariff conversation that the president has instigated is really an economic lever that’s pulling people to the table.”
Using an apt idiom, “we have had most of our eggs in China’s basket,” he said, sending the country 60% of the U.S. soybean crop.
“But in just six months, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, the Philippines, the EU, UK have signed new trade agreements, which has really created opportunity for hope,” Finstad said. “If we can get into some of these markets … it helps us diversify not only who’s buying our products, but wakes China up.
“We have to have a market that makes sense for farmers,” he said, “because we are at risk of losing generational farmers.”
Finstad grew up on his family’s farm in Brown County and earned a degree in agricultural education from the University of Minnesota.
In the last extension of the farm bill – which expires Sept. 30 – the committee “injected some money into farm country,” he said, “but we need to revisit some sort of disaster aid, or we’re going to start seeing it at the markets soon.”
Immigration
A few days before Finstad’s visit, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed that in May, June and July, “we have had zero illegal aliens entering the United States, which is the first time in this nation’s history that we’ve seen that kind of security at our nation’s border.”
It was a claim Finstad repeated, and while illegal border crossings are down significantly, it is not accurate.
According to whitehouse.gov, there were 4,598 arrests by Border Patrol for illegal entry in July, an average of 148 illegal crossings daily.
“One of the biggest obstacles we’ve had (to immigration reform) is the disaster at the border,” Finstad said. “If you’re going to get immigration reform, you have to have secure borders, because people will take the path of least resistance.”
As those numbers come down, “making sure that people coming with bad intentions aren’t here anymore” is the next “logical step in the process,” he said.
“The next step is to address immigration reform, going back to the basics and simplifying everything,” Finstad said. “We don’t, as citizens, understand what it takes to become a citizen of this country if you’re coming here for a better way of life. We should fix that; you and I should be able to explain that to our family members.”
The visa process is broken, he said, leading to a system that is not conducive to meeting the needs of the country’s work force.
“That’s why people live in the shadows – because (the process) is unnavigable,” Finstad said. “There are people here illegally because they can’t navigate the system: Shame on us, shame on them.”
There needs to be a new, much quicker process, “that meets the needs of what we have right now: huge work force shortages in agriculture, in health care and in hospitality,” he said. “Manufacturing’s right there, too – we can go down the list.”
SNAP benefits
The federal assistance program, formerly known as food stamps, is also part of the farm bill – and changes to the guidelines have drawn fire.
The real fix is livable wages and a way out of poverty, Finstad acknowledged, “but here’s how we don’t fix it: Enable people to be on programs and systems that keep them in poverty with no intentions to get them off.”
He wanted to talk about the change in the work requirements for a specific demographic that qualifies for SNAP, “because it doesn’t get talked about enough.”
For able-bodied, single adults with no dependents, the old work requirements ended at age 54. The new bill added 10 years to the age.
Recipients must spent 20 hours a week either working; seeking employment or interviewing; furthering their education in some way; or volunteering.
“For whatever reason, we’ve had programs that say it ends at 54,” he said of the requirement. “What, then, is the incentive to help that person out of poverty, to give them that leg up? The program should be about gaining skills and tools for people to climb the ladder, so we’re not just saying, ‘good luck, go find a job.’ So we made the change for that population’s work requirements to 64.”
Minnesota faces potential cuts in SNAP funding and reduced flexibility in administering the program, possibly leading to the loss of benefits for some residents. SNAP-Ed, the nutrition education program, is at risk of elimination – affecting how folks learn to shop, cook and eat healthy.
That’s the challenge, Finstad said.
“Minnesota is on an island. We do things differently from almost all states,” he said.
Specifically, social services in Minnesota are administered at the county level – one of just 10 states to do it that way.
Further, “we are one of just two states that puts that (administrative) cost on the county,” Finstad said, meaning property taxes at the county level pay for them.
The other eight states either have a state-county cost share, or the state pays all of the administrative costs.
“The other hairy part of this, as we try to clean up the waste, fraud and abuse, there is an error rate,” he said.
Though the state’s error rate is 8.98% in the delivery of funds, if a county’s error rate is above 6%, the state may have to pay for a portion of the SNAP benefits, as well. That, too, would fall on the taxpayers.
The state should have taken ownership of the administration of the social services programs mandated by the federal government “when we had the $19 billion surplus,” Finstad said, “but they didn’t.”
National Guard to D.C.
Trump, citing violent crime and homelessness, deployed 800 members of the National Guard to Washington, D.C., placing the city’s Metropolitan Police Department under federal control.
A White House official said Saturday they “may be armed,” but would not make arrests.
“This is personal to me,” Finstad said, then shared the story of a staff member who was walking home from the Capitol when he was “beat down to the ground at gunpoint by a few guys that are still on the streets.”
So are tanks the answer?
“I think it would send a message,” he said, “but I don’t think tanks are going to stop the thugs that beat the crap out of my employee with a gun.”
The judicial system “has taken the liberal mindset of … slap the hand and let you go.”
Changing it, Finstad said, “will take law enforcement, working hand-in-hand with the community, to say “enough’s enough. There are consequences for your stupid actions.
“Homicide rates are large – larger than any other communities in our country,” he said.
Washington, D.C., ranked 11th in homicide rates at 25.5 per 100,000 residents in 2024, according to FBI data, a 30-year low. Still, the rate is higher than those in New York City, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Chicago.
A country divided
Finstad called the late Melissa Hortman “a great friend of mine.”
The Speaker Emerita of the Minnesota House of Representatives and her husband, Mark, were murdered in their home June 14. A grand jury has indicted the suspect on charges that include first-degree murder; he also targeted several other state lawmakers.
Hortman was a member of the DFL; the gunman also shot and badly injured Democratic Sen. John Hoffman and his wife Yvette.
Though Finstad said he didn’t know if politics played a role in his staffer’s assault, “the fact that we’re asking it speaks to the division.”
The public’s immediate response to the legislators’ attacks “went to a fanatic Republican or outraged Democrat,” he said. “Why did we immediately go to that, instead of ‘this is a horrific monster that just murdered one of the best leaders we’ve had in the state of Minnesota.’ Whether you like the politics or not, she was a great leader and she was a great friend to many.”
Congress and politics generally “are a reflection of our country,” Finstad said. “I don’t know that we’ve ever been more emotionally reactive and charged, with little to no depth or intellect to what makes us so mad.
“How do we dehumanize each other to the point where we call each other names, we do what we do, then we say, ‘hey, you want to sit down and pass this bill together?’ That’s the slippery slope we’re on,” he said.
“We don’t treat each other like humans; we’ve forgotten to get to know each other,” and the art of finding common ground, motivation and outcomes, Finstad said.
“We need more of it in politics, we need more of it in our families, in our communities and in our relationships with friends,” he said. “That’s how we change.”