Congressman Glenn (G.T.) Thompson Goes Live on Business as Usual

Transcription:

So good afternoon, everyone. Happy Monday, this is Audrey from the tech council very happy to be here. And in a march 15, which I'm looking in six days to spring, and it seems like we definitely are going to have that I'm excited about that before we get started. And before I introduce our special guest, US Congressman, he likes to be called gt Thompson. I will like I would like to give some appreciation as I always do each and every day that we have the show Huntington bank, V. They have been just great friends and supporting us not only in business as usual, but many of the experiments that we've run over the tech council that surround marketing, media storytelling, they have really stepped up to the plate to connect our members during the pandemic. And they are one of the most active SBA lenders in the region. They've been just tremendous friend to our community, and to the members of the tech Council. So if you don't know anyone there, let us know. And we'll connect you. I also want to give a shout out to the team at at&t for their support for the council's public policy series and for helping us leverage this format to connect our members to their elected officials. Throughout this pandemic, at&t has helped in many, many ways, large and small to help bridge the digital divide and tackle food insecurity, which we still are experiencing. We appreciate everything that their team has done to support Pittsburgh community, and then 40 by 80. That's the longitude and latitude of Pittsburgh. And that is the wholly owned subsidiary of the Pittsburgh tech Council, which is our 501 c three. And you're going to hear more about the programs that we're delivering there that are that are particularly focused on workforce development, apprenticeships as well as entrepreneurships. So before we get started, just want to remind everyone that we've muted your mics, and we've muted your mic, so that we don't hear anything in the background. And we have a chat. And the chat will allow you to ask some questions as it makes sense during the time that we are interviewing our guest and Jonathan kersting is with us today as always, so he is going to be monitoring that chat. So we're gonna welcome right now, Congressman, his name is GT, but it's really Glenn Thompson. He is from the Pennsylvania 15th congressional district. And he is joining us from his home office, like many of us are, so it's really great. Welcome to the program, Congressman. And before we start talking about agriculture and broadband and your district, and so many of the topics that we want to cover, we let's talk about you. Let's talk about your background. You know, what, before you became a member of Congress, Congress, what were you up to?

Well, Audrey, thank you so much. And thank you to the Pittsburgh Technology Council, you all were a great ally in my in my work as I lead on career and technical education for the nation that for many years. You're a big part of my our, our joint success, modernizing career and technical education, probably with President Trump back in I think was 2018 when he signed the be able to be a you know, a guy from Canada from my hometown of I still live near close to the homestead I grew up on. So I live outside of Metropolis, Howard, Pennsylvania, 700 people and one red light and I live in I live in the suburbs of that. So to go from that to be standing in the Oval Office when the President knighted states is signing into law, the the 21st century act to modernizing current tech education for the 21st century act was what a what a truly humbling and amazing experience and, and you all really helped in that process. You were at the table as we worked on, on modernizing career tech education. So first of all, thank you. I'm My home is in San Juan County. Like I said, I live in Howard township outside the borough of Howard. I, my my background is this is where I've, I've always lived I can see the homestead that I grew up with my my brother and well, actually one natural brother foster brother and my sister and and today my my wife and I we've had been in our home for well over 30 years. We raised our three sons here. So this, this is home. I've had, you know the privilege and the honor of and let me just say current technical education was early on was a made a big difference. In my early years with my family, my dad come out of the Navy come out with a skill set. But he needed more more training needed more education. And he took advantage of, of GI Bill and went in and being became a one off to school became a tool and die maker and was able to make a good living that to support our family. And so I saw firsthand how, you know, technology, career and technical education transforms lives. We have my own my own background, I, I actually I started out at Penn State, pursuing a degree in agriculture and vaccine environmental resource management. And a funny thing happened the way to graduation, I had to pay the bills. So I actually started before I went to Penn State working 11 to 711 at night until seven in the morning, at a nursing home as part of the nursing staff. And I go to school in the morning. That didn't I did that for the first year didn't go real well. And so I switched to three to 11 but worked my way through college basically and, and earned my way through college but in the process that fell in love with healthcare and went on to graduate with a rehabilitation related degree and practice health care for for 28 years actually and Lycoming County, commuter dare from center County, you know, along the way, career and technical education continue to play a role in my life, I had a friend that got me into working with her to put together a curriculum for at the time was the Cambria County Community College. They've since rebranded and great school and, and even and, you know, one, two evenings a week and Saturdays, I drive to evansburg. actually drive 44 miles to Howard. And then we drive by basically an hour and 15 minutes to Evans, Bergen, and taught classes there for for mostly adult learners who are just looking to better their lives through some additional career and technical education training. And I just saw what a difference how transforming that was. And I think that those foundations are kind of some of the reasons why, as I ran for congress in 2008, and was elected have been serving for 13 years now, it's hard to believe. That's why pursuing supporting current tech education, I think this is probably my 11th year of CO chairing the current tech education caucus, one of the strongest bipartisan caucuses in Congress. Current technical education is absolutely a unifying topic. And, and related to that is, in my 13th year, I'm now the the Republican leader, the ranking member, you know, sometimes I joke around and say it's the chairman and exile of the US House Agriculture Committee. Because obviously, agriculture, education is an important part of career and technical education as well. So that's, that's kind of been my real quick summary artery of my pathway.

Well, you know, listen, with everything going on with nursing homes, and everything that we've seen, during the pandemic, we've actually taking quite an interest in terms of, you know, understanding what's happening right here in our backyard. So that experience has served me well, in terms of really what's happening in terms of both the unraveling and the support for nursing homes.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, at one time when I worked in a nursing home, and, um, you know, it was, what would have been it. I practice healthcare for 28 years. So let's say it was, so it was probably five, six years before that, you know, at that point, nursing homes were a little different. You know, I actually remember some, some older man who just didn't have family members. But they were perfectly well, they were so well that I remember them about 1030. At night, 10 o'clock, they would walk out the front door, they've walked down the street to the local pub, and about one 130 in the morning, either the police would bring them back or they'd stagger back into the facility. That's not skilled nursing today,

that's not skilled

nursing, skilled nursing today is really, it most of us are not going to have to go into a nursing home with burgers, a small percentage because of illness and disability, you know, that it's a place where they're going to go to live with dignity. And, and, and we want it to be more home liked and institutional. I had tremendous concern with some of the things that were done, you know, related to long term care residents, you know, out of 535 members of the House and Senate, I'm on the only one who was a former licensed nursing home administrator, as part of my rehab career, and so yeah, there's and your skill sets there that we need to be supporting. Obviously, we need to create opportunities because we need qualified and trained people to work with really, the folks who are I think For the most part are the most at risk among us so.

Well, that's great. So let's talk about your region. Let's talk about your geographic district because it's massive in terms of landmass. Yeah, well,

I I won the lottery in terms of where I live obviously it is a wonderful area. It is. It only is getting bigger with almost with every redistricting, it gets a little larger. Right now we're 24% of the landmass of Pennsylvania. Now, you think about that. There's 18 congressional seats. I've got almost a quarter of the state in 2020 minutes from downtown Pittsburgh right now right over to center County, where my home is and I'm, I'm kind of on the western or the eastern frontier. And then we go right up into to the New York line and Warren County and McKean County. It's 14 counties. It's, I think I last left over 11,000 square miles. It's a but it's a great congressional district full of really good Pennsylvanians that live there and, and manufacturers and in industry, agriculture, and agriculture is our largest industry in Pennsylvania, and certainly a leading industry and in my district, but we have we have great manufacturing as well. We've really have the world epicenter of powdered metals is in my congressional district. When you look up at that elk county and Cameron and Jefferson, it's amazing the history there, and how many, how many manufactured parts or powdered metal that's going forward? We're also the district includes the birth of the commercial oil industry. venango County, Titusville, birthplace, so it's, it's pretty diverse in terms of businesses and industries. And it's just a great area.

Well, now that you're the ranking member of the House agricultural committee, talk to us about the state of the nation of agriculture industry, you know, one year into the pandemic, what are we facing? And there's a question out there also about, you know, support?

Sure. Well, you know, just a little background agriculture itself in the rural economy has been on a decline was on a decline for about eight years, we started to see that turnaround, we've got some distance to go, you know, most of that decline was specifically because of two commodities. One was cotton. We don't really grow much of any cotton in Pennsylvania, but the other ones dairy. And we do dairies, our largest commodity of our biggest industry, agriculture, and, and the reason for that, again, was was misguided. It just shows you what can happen with bad public policy. And it was back in 2010, in a very partisan way. whole milk was removed from our schools. And when they did that, really following bad science and the science shows today, that was a mistake. We wound up with we lost entire generation milk drinkers and we cheated kids on the nourishment that comes from milk fat, whole milks, only three and a half percent milk fat. And today, all the research shows from both on a health perspective, and quite frankly, if you're dieting is one of the few beverages that is, you know that you don't go back for more afterwards. That's it's really a low sugar content. And But anyways, so that was the status and then we got into COVID, almost a year ago, to the to the day. I mean, I think it was just yesterday, or maybe Friday or Friday or Saturday that the World Health Organization fighting now, yeah, declared, gotta get off its button declared that we're in a pandemic. And that had a tremendous impact on the agriculture industry because of the disruption in the food supply chain, you know, prior to COVID, and I was shocked Audrey, by this statistic. Over 61% of all meals were eaten in restaurants, and restaurant tables. Wow. Huge right. And all of a sudden, restaurants are closed, schools were closed. Universities closed a place that people gathered that that you know, to eat, and so, and food manufacturing was impacted because you you when you're selling photo restaurant, to a school to a university, you package a different way you package it in bulk for efficiency. And then all of a sudden, everybody was forced back to the family dining room table. And those large packages, both package packages, or whatever was eggs, milk, commodities. It just didn't fit. And so we still had people that we had to feed the same people and the farmers were still producing the same amount but it shows you a disruption in the food supply chain and just in terms of packaging. What a difference that made and it really proud of our food manufacturers, they really did. They adapted with time they came around, we gave them lots of flexibility, which I was really pleased to help us and support them to do that, to make those transitions. And but it did, it did impact our farmers in terms of their revenue. And, you know, there were there was milk that was dumped. There were there were real crops that were plowed under, there were

cows and chickens and pigs that quite frankly, were, you know, were euthanized because just they weren't able to get them in market the appropriate time. You know, it was a it was a real disaster. So one of my goals as a Republican leader, the house I Agriculture Committee is, is learning from that and building resiliency within the food supply chain. Now we came to the aid of our farmers with the throughout the five cares packages. By the way, those five and 2020 were all bipartisan. The one and two just jam through the house. But President Biden signed on Friday, I'm gonna be completely honest with you. That was that was disgusting. After we show we could do it in a bipartisan way, five times. And then to only one party be at the table. It's just unacceptable. But those those five times a part, we provide a lot of relief, the paycheck protection program. And I think everybody's familiar with all the things we did the investments in vaccines and those, but we did address the need of agriculture as well. And it was through a program was called Well, first of all, making sure our farmers were available for PPP, and the idle loans and idle grants. And we had work to do that. But also the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program see fap was really assisted with where farmers were able to show a loss. We did a CIF app want to see fab two was done by the Department of Agriculture Under Secretary produce leaders MPN the authority to be able to do a second round. And on December 21, we passed Congress passed December 27, President Trump signed CIF that the fifth cares bill that included a C fat three we're still waiting on, on the Biden administration to release that money, unfortunately, it's going to come. You know, I've got a decent relationship with Secretary Vilsack. I served with him for eight years when he was Secretary of Agriculture under the you know, under the Obama administration, and Tom Vilsack. He under he gets it, he understands agriculture, I was thrilled to hear that he was going to be coming back in as Secretary of Agriculture.

So what he just before we get to some questions real quick, what do you think is one of the biggest areas for innovation in terms of agriculture?

Well, agriculture is science, technology and innovation. So everything, absolutely everything. And it always has been science and technology, even in its earliest days, going back 1000 years, because they were culture was, you know, farmers, even then, you know, it was trial and error. You know, it was a rudimentary form of science, but that's what they used. And they had to to be able to adapt to figure out how they're able to sustain themselves because it was system sustaining agriculture. At that point, if you didn't grow it, you didn't eat, you didn't eat, you starve to death, and you died. And so it's always been science and somewhat science and technology, even rudimentary and crude back then, today, it's sophisticated. And, and I think, you know, it's, it's, it's growing and producing more or less acreage, it's growing and producing more with less moisture in some places. It's growing and producing more with too much moisture in other places. It is, you know, it is it is about climate, and working to make sure now we there should be a two adult goal here, that we have a healthy climate and a healthy economy. And quite frankly, I'll tell you agriculture is a solution to that. I don't know whether you realize we we are first hearing we had was on was on climate change. And, and so I was able really to highlight the conservative climate solutions that are already in place. And much of that comes from science and technology. You know, the fact that I think 2017, we took over 600 billion Giga tons or some sorry, 600 Giga tons of carbon out of the air through land based solutions. So that's precision agriculture, healthy soils. Some of the conservation measures, livestock pastoring it's healthy forest management, which means you're cutting trees down. But you're replanting other trees. So we have multiple generations of trees in a forest. Those are the largest carbon sinks in the world. And so let's it really is science and technology is is an excellent solution. Now I will say one of the biggest problems I've run into lately government bureaucrats not adopting this proven technology. You know, they, they, you get a new technology that actually works, that shows proven results. And, and, you know, we we run at the speed of bureaucracy of getting it approved. I think that does a couple things. And first of all that discourages farmers from adopting it. And so they, they just kind of throw their hands up and walk away because they have something that actually works. And yet a government bureaucrat doesn't get around to approving it for years. That's, that's something that's obviously a gold mine to the fix into address. I'm not looking to skip any steps. I want to make sure it gets scrutinized, but it needs to be done in a timely basis. And I can give you a couple examples here, you know, just right here in Pennsylvania with that, or, you know, just just lately and one of Miranda problems with DEP environmental protection and Pennsylvania, of their adoption of a new technology that that addresses a problem they've been dealing with in a wonderful way. And another one where the DEP US Department of Agriculture for for a processing meat processing manufacturer, invest state of the art equipment, hundreds of millions of dollars to build a USDA kind of drill is dragging its feet of even considering it. So we that's that's one of the issues when it comes to technology, especially that technical, legal.

Yeah, the approval process.

Yeah, the approval process.

So So anything you want to grab a couple of questions that are out there.

Got some great ones here. Congressman, thanks for joining us today. This is a great conversation. Dirt camp wants to know, are there any available programs in the current COVID relief bill or prior ones to help pa dairy farmers with financial problems due to COVID-19?

a great question. And absolutely dairy is something that's near and dear to my heart. I'm a I'm from a long, long, long line of dairy farmers. Unfortunately, most of them were wiped out through eminent domain, when they built a wonderful recreation Lake here in Howard, in our Township, all of our dairy lands lay at the bottom of the lake today. There was absolutely I fought hard with his most recent round, the one that President Trump signed, I guess that's the most not the most recent one now, but to December 27. One, it was signed into law for those small farmers and their net negative revenue, to be able to qualify for the first time for the paycheck Protection Program. Unfortunately, because of the nature of how dairy is, is reimbursed, these folks based on that revenue were were not eligible. And that's been fixed, that my language made it into that bill. with, you know, with right now with, with the Agriculture Committee, one of the things I'll be looking at, is really doing a review of the and we're started collecting data on this and information of looking at the federal milk marketing orders. You know, one of the things we put in the farm bill was an adjustment so the farmers would do much better with that, or marginally better. And unfortunately, this was pre COVID, right, because it was a 2018 Farm Bill. And COVID just mess things up because cheese became the really the the preferred dairy product because of the shelf life. And so that so cheese is class free fluid milk is class one, actually cheese was selling was getting much better money than fluid milk was getting and which is not usually the case. So farmers before COVID, were doing well with that change. After COVID it our dairy farmers were hurt by it. And so just know that that's all on the table. And we're going to be leading a systematic review of that, you know, the bottom line is I want our dairy farmers to be sustainable, and sustainable means to me more money in their checking accounts. And, and their savings account. That's what truly sustainable is. Because if we lose those farms, then we're going to wind up food insecure. We're going to wind up dependent on other countries for our food. That's a very dangerous situation to be in.

Right. Jonathan? Is there anything else?

here from LMS? Oh says I'm she's thank you for your sponsorship of the Health Act. Do you expect Congress to become more open to supporting telehealth, including reimbursement given how invaluable telemedicine has been during this pandemic? Absolutely. Oh

telemedicine is evidence that God's got a sense of humor. Because I I'm a guy that I was probably the last of my peer group before coming to college or coming to Congress when I was practicing healthcare to actually even have an email address, right? I remember my one of the board meetings after email was was a thing and they sent around the list and now they asked us to sign up our email address and I wrote down none at this time and Somebody said, Well, that's the coolest domain I've ever heard of. I said, No, you don't get it. I don't have one of those. yet. They're not going on to be kind of a pioneer with telemedicine expansion. I've had two pieces of legislation, one signed by President Obama, one signed by President Trump, that expanded the use of telemedicine and increasing the poll of providers crossing state lines, so that we're not limited by the states of where for these folks have their licenses to practice. And so I hope that Health Act will be I think, Alan, one of the unintended consequences, a positive unintended consequence of, of this terrible plague that we've lived through and emerging out of at this point, was recognition of just how important rural broadband connectivity is, right? I was gonna ask you about that. And as a part of that telehealth, it's just an efficient way. And we provided all kinds of flexibilities and waivers under the Trump administration, you know, to our providers, for billing and utilization. And that kind of those kinds of things were done as waivers, but they should be codified. My Health Act would do that in terms of our rural health centers, making sure that because if there's a place that makes the most sense to get on, on the grid on online, and that's the Rural Health Centers, where we tend to see the biggest digital divide, and so I'm, I'm hopeful, very hopeful, and I'll be that's one of my bills that now, we'll be leaning into.

So the last thing that I want to sneak in, is I really want to talk about immigration. 50% of the people who start tech companies are immigrants. Okay. And our immigration reform has not kept up the bus for a long, long time. Where Where do you see is to give some hope, that maybe there's going to be some bipartisan action?

I think so. But I'm not sure it's going to be in the tech space. Unfortunately, I think that the tech is going to get swept up on a very partisan bill, that really that Republicans have not been invited to the table on, who will probably going to vote on this week. I

apologize, are educated here, and then they can't stay that's not going to be on the table.

You know, it's going to be on the table. I just don't think he gets through the Senate. Because it's going to be the wish list of all the extreme things will probably be in it. No, I may be wrong, Audrey. But that's that's what I'm anticipating. And that's a shame I hear I'm, yeah, I'm in favor of merit based immigration system. And I don't think there's anything wrong with a country looking out for its own interest. And that means workforce. And that's, that's what we ought to design our, our, you know, our immigration system around. And I'm great with family members coming because I also think we've had a meltdown of the nuclear family in this country. And that has led to a lot of lot of social problems that we have, because of the of just how frail and fragile the nuclear family is. But a lot of these modern folks are coming here. You know, I think they can help us revive the nuclear family, they can, they can definitely help us with meeting workforce needs. Now, there's two bills probably going to be on the floor this week. And like I said, the one is going to be no border security, it's going to be continuing that this border crisis. It's, I just, I mean, I'm my suspect at this point. And I'd love to be proven wrong.

This is a really important thing, Southwestern Pennsylvania people.

No, no, absolutely. And now, the second bill will be an ag workforce bill, and I've leaned into that bill, actually, I'm a co sponsor of it. It's a bipartisan bill, it needs to have some improvements. And I'm, so I'll be offering an amendment on that bill this week. You know, addressing some of the issues that are that are out there, I want to make sure, make sure that our works for our our farmers, our ranchers. It really is for for the producers, you know, without a without a workforce, again, you know, herds are not going to get milked or attended to and crops aren't going to get planted or they're going to get plowed under. And quite frankly, that's going to lead to food insecurity. So we'll see I don't have a lot of hope. Unfortunately, the with the makeup with just the attitude. Among my democratic friends, are the leadership democratic leadership. Let me put it that way of taking bipartisan ideas at this point. So I'm not sure my amendment will be made in order. But that said, I'll be meeting with Republican senators and encourage them to consider this bill when it gets there. But to consider it and to make make some of the changes that I'm outlining in my in my amendment that I'm putting

Congressman, it's been Great to catch up with you, I know we can talk longer You got it, you got a glimpse into the things that really matter to us. So if you could continue to champion that stuff that really is important, it's important to southwestern Pennsylvania. But it's important all across Pennsylvania, because innovation in agriculture is happening here. And innovation across the ecosystem across markets, helps us all. So we get to educate the best and brightest, and they want to stay, and then they can't.

Now that you're right, and those are the types of things I've always been very supportive of love to see some bipartisan work to achieve that maybe if this bill, this first immigration bill goes down in flames does can't get 60 votes in the Senate. You know, I, you know, I think these first 100 days have been really bad policy for the most part that's been put forward, fill a political promise or agenda. Maybe once we get past that we can work on some things in a bipartisan way. And the kinds of things you talked about with immigration would be I did want to note on the broadband side, just so the folks are aware that, you know, the cares money that came out to the to the States, and then out to the counties. I was successful in the December legislation that President Trump sign of including the local act, and the local act actually gave our our counties another nine to 12 months, I think nine months actually, to be able to use your cares money, because a lot of our county commissioners were choosing and appropriate, so to use that money for rural broadband, because there's just no way they could complete and wrap up a rural broadband project by December 31, of 2020. So, so we were able to successfully extend that. And I really appreciate those local leaders, and that that recognize just how important that is. It's important for the economy, for families for health for education. I mean, it's, it probably wouldn't, I'll be honest with you when it comes to infrastructure. And I'll be leaning in on whatever infrastructure comes our way. I think it's the most important infrastructure investment that we can make, honestly, because of how it impacts so many different aspects of American lives.

Well, listen, we've taken up our allotted time, it's been great to catch up with you. I know that you are working feverishly, and you know what our issues are that we care about. And we appreciate you taking those issues with you, as you know, head back to Washington. So I can't thank you enough. And appreciate your candor, in your own upbringing and the passion that you have for the work that you do. So, thanks for joining us and Jonathan, who do we have tomorrow?

Tomorrow we have the new VC fund black tech ventures stopping by.

Great, that's great new venture fund. We didn't even talk about capital, Congressman. That's a whole we have a whole list of things about but thank you, Congressman. And stay safe. Everyone. Enjoy your day.

All right. Thank you very much,

you guys.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai