FreedomWorks Sends Letter to Congress Supporting OFF Act
Dear Sen. Lee and Rep. Mace:
On behalf of FreedomWorks’ activist community, we write today to express our strong support for the Opportunities for Fairness in Farming (OFF) Act, H.R. 1249/S.557, and appreciate your bicameral leadership of the measure. We are encouraged by the strong support that your legislation has achieved and your efforts to see the measure included in the upcoming Farm Bill, and we are committed to helping achieve that end.
Your legislation brings hope to the more than 250,000 farmers and ranchers across America that support the measure and have paid billions of dollars into the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Commodity Checkoff Programs and to conservatives who are tired of seeing Washington, D.C. bureaucrats and runaway government programs mismanage funds that livestock producers are forced to pay into the till.
As the Daily Caller’s investigative report noted in 2018, dairy checkoff funds spent by Dairy Management, Inc. on the “Got Milk?” campaign “didn’t sell more milk. In fact, per-capita fluid milk consumption dropped 24 percent between the time ‘Got Milk?’ launched in 1993 and was dropped in 2014, according to USDA data.”
A prior investigative report by Politico noted that it had been “four years since the USDA published legally required annual financial reports on a $400 million dairy research and promotional fund” under the leadership of President Barack Obama’s U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Vilsack joined Dairy Management, Inc. just days after leaving office garnering a salary of more than $800,000 per year. With President Joe Biden’s appointment of Vilsack to serve in the same post again, we believe the need for transparency, accountability, and a system of checks and balances the OFF Act seeks to achieve are more important than ever in 2023.
We commend you for your leadership on this issue and stand ready, willing, and able to assist in your efforts to secure enactment of this important legislation.
Sincerely,
Adam Brandon
President, FreedomWorks
