The Trump administration’s plan to shut Agriculture Department buildings in the nation’s capital and reorganize the vast federal agency is likely to divide Congress along partisan lines.
But on one point, Democrats and Republicans in the Senate agree: They were caught off-guard by the USDA’s sweeping announcement last Thursday, despite the agency’s promises to regularly engage with Congress.
“I’d like to at least have consultation,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a senior member of the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee and the longest-serving current senator. “And they didn’t do that.”
Implications of the department’s announcement are only beginning to sink in as the committee plans a hastily arranged hearing Wednesday. Among the many questions: over how long will the USDA implement the plan, and how many employees — both in Washington and other places they’d have to vacate — will be willing to move, in some cases across the country?
