Congressman Tracey Mann’s listening tour of the Big 1st District of Kansas continued Friday with stops in Great Bend and Larned. The freshman Representative came prepared with posters listing “What We’ve Done” and “What We’re Doing.”
Accomplishments include hiring qualified staff and opening offices in Dodge City, Manhattan and Washington, D.C. Those offices have opened over 400 cases this year on a variety of issues Kansans in the Big First may encounter when interfacing with the federal government, he said. He secured a seat on the House Agriculture and Veterans Affairs committees, and sent 60 letters to elected and appointed officials supporting conservative politics.
Mann has introduced 14 bills related to agriculture, land-owner rights, the Second Amendment, veterans and the right to life. He has also cosponsored 127 bills, six of which were passed out of the U.S. House of Representatives, and has “cast a few hundred votes.”
For “What We’re Doing,” Mann cited:
• Stopping regulatory overreach - Preventing President Joe Biden’s land grab (via the 30 by 30 order) and appealing the Lesser Prairie-Chicken designation as an endangered species.
• Opposing Biden’s budget - Protecting the stepped-up basis and protecting taxpayer dollars from funding abortion.
• Protecting America as we know it.
Visiting with the audience at the Great Bend American Legion Post 180, Mann mentioned the big adjustment his election has been for himself, his wife and four children, ranging in age from 3 to 10. “Starting this summer, for whatever reason, we decided to buy a puppy and we got four baby kittens as well,” he added.
Mann shared a story about his family going to a dinner in Manhattan. After dinner, his son Austin looked at him and said, “Dad, I’ve got butter in my pocket.” Sure enough, both of his son’s pockets were filled with foil butter packets.
“He had more butters than I could hold with both hands, which I guess is good for the dairy industry. But I (said), 'Little man, what’s the plan here?' ... I can tell there was no plan and it was not going to end well. And I would say that’s similar to what I see in DC right now; there actually is a plan but a lot of policies and things that are being pursued right now I think are not going to end well and are not going to be good for us in the Big First and for agriculture.”
Even though Republicans gained some seats in the House in the last election, Mann said the majority leadership has not moved toward the middle. “We’ve actually seen the exact opposite where they take the hard left turn and jam through a lot of policies that I’ve strongly disagreed with. I think the overwhelming majority of folks in the Big First would disagree with (these) as well. Things like HR 1, which would nationalize our election. Barton County does not need Washington, D.C. to tell you all how to run the election,” he said.
“There’s been legislation that would defund the police and do away with qualified immunity; that passed the House. I oppose all of these things,” he said. “There has been a bill that would decrease our Second Amendment rights. There’s been other legislation that would make Washington, D.C. the 51st state.”
Mann said he’s also concerned about the national debt. “We are approaching $30 trillion in debt. Last year alone, we added $6 trillion,” he said. If all of the spending that the Biden administration has proposed in their budget, if all of it passes, it’ll add another $6 trillion to the debt this year; so then we’ll be at $36 trillion.”
Infrastructure bill and stepped-up basis
“There’s a lot of talk right now about infrastructure.” What President Biden proposed is, “basically the Green New Deal,” Mann said.
“President Biden proposed a $2 trillion infrastructure bill, the biggest bill proposed in the history of the country. I understand that of that $2 trillion, only $100 billion towards roads and bridges – true infrastructure. $80 billion for climate change research and $186 billion for electric vehicle charging stations; $400 billion to upgrade people’s houses and commercial buildings to be more environmentally friendly.”
He’s also concerned with how this would be paid for, by raising corporate taxes by 7% and raising capital gains taxes to as high as 41%, and by eliminating the stepped-up basis, which a lot of his constituents are asking about. A stepped-up basis is the readjustment of the value of an appreciated asset for tax purposes upon inheritance. This reduces the capital gains tax liability on a farm passed down to the next generation.
“Their proposal was to do away with the stepped-up basis. So we’ve been fighting that tooth and nail, and I’m pretty optimistic that we can kill that,” Mann said.
30 by 30
In January, President Biden issued many executive orders, Mann said. One was a “land grab” known as 30 by 30. “It basically set by the year 2030 that 30% of America’s land should not be in production, and really gave no detail beyond that.” The report came out a few weeks ago but there still aren’t enough details, he said. It did say that people’s personal property rights would not be impacted and that existing lands and conservation programs, including things like CRP, would count toward the 30%.
“So that’s good,” Mann said, “but it still wasn’t good enough for me. And so, I introduced legislation the next week that would do away with the executive order altogether. Sen. Marshall and Sen. Moran cosponsored that with me. It is important for us that our bar should not be, ‘we should be glad it wasn’t worse.’ Our bar should be what’s right for Kansas, and for the Big First and for agriculture. And what’s right for that is for that to go away altogether.”
Hyde Amendment
The country has had a bipartisan agreement for decades that no taxpayer dollars should go toward abortion, Mann said.
“Whether you’re pro life or pro choice – I’m very pro life – the majority of Americans ... do not want to see taxpayer dollars go towards abortion. The language surrounding all that is called the Hyde Amendment and has been in every budget for decades. Well, the Biden budget that came out here a few weeks ago did not have the traditional Hyde Amendment.”
Audience comments and questions included concerns about the pubic being censored by Facebook and big tech companies, as well as concerns about the increased number of illegal immigrants coming into the country at the southern border.
