![]() “Our employees at rural development and USDA face significant challenges, whether it’s outdated technology that hinders their ability to comply with congressional directives, antiquated loan and grant applications that means we’re not serving the people who need and deserve our support,” she said. She also said USDA employees are key to delivering services and maintaining connections to the communities they serve. “If confirmed as deputy secretary, I would want to focus on being that customer service agency that our farmers and rural people rely on and all of the backend work that supports that effort,” Torres Small told Stabenow. “When I started working as undersecretary for rural development, I realized there is a real need to focus on operations because it is fundamental to making sure rural people have the rural development they deserve, that there are programs that are easy to access,” she said. She also said she has made it a priority to meet with field staff across the country to build a “Team RD” to focus on priorities. She seems to have generated goodwill from committee members with visits to their states and troubleshooting problems that lawmakers have identified such as cumbersome applications and regulations that are obstacles for small communities with little or no staff. She was confirmed in late 2021 as undersecretary, a role that gives her oversight of programs that provide loans and grants for rural businesses, clean water projects in small towns and the ReConnect program to give rural communities with access to broadband service. She is the daughter of educators and the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants who were farmworkers. ![]() ![]() Torres Small, a water rights lawyer before she served in the House during the 116th Congress, grew up in southwestern New Mexico and represented a mostly rural district. President Joe Biden nominated Torres Small for the post after Deputy Secretary Jewel Bronaugh left the department in February. She would be the chief operating officer responsible for strategic planning for a department that operates 29 agencies and offices and employs about 100,000 people who largely work outside the Beltway. Torres Small told the committee Wednesday that she would be “part manager and part departmental ambassador" as deputy secretary. “As the deputy, you must provide leadership to USDA’s appointed officials and the career agency heads and create a culture of accountability.” ![]() “Let me be absolutely clear, I do not believe that you are responsible for this specific issue,” Boozman said to Torres Small. Torres Small has a proven track record as a strong leader, which will be needed as the department faces unprecedented challenges like tackling the climate crisis and helping farmers manage geopolitical risks,” Stabenow, D-Mich., said at a hearing Wednesday.īoozman, R-Ark., who said he was dissatisfied with the Agriculture Department's failure to provide him information about potentially billions of dollars in unspent pandemic funds, said he hoped Torres Small would improve transparency as the department's second most senior leader. It's true, it will remind us that we are, after all, not God.Senate Agriculture Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow and ranking member John Boozman said they supported Xochitl Torres Small to become Agriculture deputy secretary, all but assuring her promotion from undersecretary for rural development. And your father's name will shine again like a beacon in the galaxy. Then, having reached the heights, this all-but-divine race perished in a single night, and nothing was preserved above ground.Īlta, about a million years from now the human race will have crawled up to where the Krell stood in their great moment of triumph and tragedy. Ethically and technologically they were a million years ahead of humankind, for in unlocking the mysteries of nature they had conquered even their baser selves, and when in the course of eons they had abolished sickness and insanity, crime and all injustice, they turned, still in high benevolence, upwards towards space. In times long past, this planet was the home of a mighty, noble race of beings who called themselves the Krell. United Planets Cruiser C57D, now more than a year out from Earth Base on a special mission to the planetary system of the great main-sequence star Altair. And so, at last, mankind began the conquest and colonization of deep space. Almost at once there followed the discovery of hyperdrive through which the speed of light was first obtained and later greatly surpassed. By 2200 A.D., they had reached the other planets of our solar system. In the final decade of the 21st Century, men and women in rocket ships landed on the moon.
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