Remembering, and forgetting, rural America

My ambivalence about President Barack Obama's new White House Rural Council is pretty well summed up by Politico's headline: “The White House says it hasn't forgot about rural America.”

That's nice, I guess. Still, I can't help but think there must be a difference between being remembered and being reminded every so often that you haven't been forgotten.

And I wish politicians didn't always feel compelled to distinguish rural America from regular America, as if we were some kind of distant cousin.

Sixty million Americans live in our nation's hinterlands - a full fifth of the country's population. And the fact is, the feds have been “not forgetting” rural America since around the time of the Civil War.

From the USDA and the Land Grant System to the Tennessee Valley Authority and rural electrification all the way through the Extension Service, Community Action Agencies, Regional Rural Development Centers - a hundred-plus years worth of agencies and programs to drag quaint, pastoral rural America into the present.

Some of those initiatives did a ton of good. Still, times are tight, jobs are scarce, infrastructure is deteriorating, families are packing up and moving away. I'm not sure how a new council - even one chaired by our own Tom Vilsack - is going to change that.

According to the White House, they'll do it by recommending ways to boost rural economies and quality of life.

They'll start with jobs, but they'll also concern themselves with education, transportation, health care, infrastructure and conservation.

They'll coordinate with agricultural groups, small businesses, state, local and tribal governments.

“I think it's a good beginning,” Second District Rep. Dave Loebsack said when I talked to him on Friday. “It's always a good thing when any White House decides it's going to provide some focus to rural communities and rural economies.”

Loebsack, a member of the House Rural Caucus, is convinced that modest federal investments can equal big change for rural communities, even though the Rural Council's purpose still seems sort of “nebulous.”

He has been pushing for years to establish a federal Office of Rural Policy in order to help struggling rural communities. “We've got to work on reversing this trend,” he told me Friday. I agree.

But I'd have more confidence in the Rural Council if first we could reverse another trend: Washington's long-standing habit of remembering and forgetting - then remembering, then forgetting - rural America.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net