“WE SEND ALL THIS FOREIGN AID
TO OTHER COUNTRIES TO HELP THEM
DEVELOP WATER RESOURCES, AND YET
THERE ARE PEOPLE LIVING RIGHT HERE
[IN TEXAS] WITHOUT POTABLE WATER.”
According to a 2010 report
from the Congressional Research
Service, even farm families don’t
make money from farms. “Nearly
90 percent of total farm household income comes from off-farm
sources,” the report found. Manufacturing accounts for roughly
25 percent of rural private sector
earnings and about 12 percent of
all rural jobs, according to the report. As in many other places, the
service sector is the predominant
source for employment opportunities in rural areas.
“Farming, and agriculture more
generally, however, remain the major legislative focus for much of
congressional debate on rural policy,” the report noted.
Other advocates, including John
Henneberger, a co-director of the
Texas Low-Income Housing Information Service, which works
to develop low-income housing
opportunities in Texas, have con-
demned both Congress and the
USDA for cutting back on a number of crucial programs. Henneberger is particularly incensed at
steady declines in housing loan
programs that have helped thousands of very low- and low-income
families to build their homes or
otherwise become homeowners.
“Vilsack may be investing historic amounts of money in some
people in rural America, but it is
not getting invested in the homes
or lives of poor rural Americans,”
Henneberger said. “Rural Americans have Congress to thank for
acting to reject a portion of Secretary Vilsack’s unprecedented
transfer of funds to corporate agriculture from programs that help
the rural poor afford a home.”
On this, and on charges that
the administration is too agriculture-focused to really address the
problem of rural poverty, Vilsack
again becomes incensed. “One of
the biggest frustrations I have in
life—in life, not just in this job,”
he said, “is how few people under-