Washington Rep. Dan Newhouse, a member of the Appropriations Committee, and five newly elected Republicans will join the House Agriculture Committee in January to fill seats vacated by committee departures on the GOP side.
The first-term members are Reps. Tony Wied of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania’s Rob Bresnahan, Mark Harris from North Carolina, Indiana’s Mark Messmer and David Taylor of Ohio.
The committee will continue with 29 GOP members in the 119th Congress.
Reps. Mark Alford of Missouri, Max Miller from Ohio and Nick Langworthy of New York all won reelection races but are leaving the committee.
Newhouse was granted a waiver to serve on both the Appropriations and Agriculture committees during the upcoming Congress, mimicking the process Iowa Rep. Randy Feenstra pursued to hold seats on both the Ways and Means and Agriculture committees.
On Appropriations, Newhouse is a member of the Agriculture, and Energy and Water subcommittees. He recently ended his tenure as Chair of the Western Caucus.
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Passing a farm bill early in 2025 will be a "huge priority," Newhouse told Agri-Pulse.
“I certainly want to be part of the team that brings positive policy direction forward so that agriculture and farmers, ranchers, processors, everybody, have a chance to be successful,” he added.
Reps. Marc Molinaro of New York, Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon and John Duarte of California are currently serving on the Ag Committee but lost reelection races in November. Pro-union Chavez-DeRemer has since been nominated to serve as secretary of labor in the incoming Trump administration.
The five newly elected representatives enter the committee with varying agriculture backgrounds.
Bresnahan is the third generation to join his family’s electrical contracting company working closely with the team of union tradesmen. House Ag Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., headlined a farm roundtable for Bresnahan during the campaign.
Wisconsin’s 8th District is the third largest district for dairy production, making the Agriculture Committee an obvious assignment, Rep. Tony Wied told Spectrum News after being sworn into Congress. Wied will also serve on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee tasked with reauthorizing the federal surface transportation programs during the next Congress.
A small business owner and former state lawmaker, Messmer served in both the Indiana House and Senate before being elected to Congress this year. In 2022, he sponsored a bill that would ban the foreign ownership of agricultural land in Indiana. Messmer calls himself a “pro-Trump conservative” on his campaign website.
Harris, a Baptist pastor from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, will sit on the Agriculture and Judiciary committees. In a post on X, he said, “I’ll stand up for our farmers, support rural communities, and work to keep food affordable for every American family.”
A concrete company contractor and former prosecutor from Ohio, Taylor received an endorsement from the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation Agriculture for Good Government PAC. He will also serve on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
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