(Photo by Stephen Koranda)Following his reelection victory, Kansas Senator Pat Roberts is sending the message that Republicans in Washington will start tackling issues they’ve wanted to take on in recent years. Roberts echoed statements made by other GOP senators who said work will soon start on passing a budget. He says when that work starts, he’ll use the process to cut regulations.
“You can use that to rein in spending of course, but you can also target things from various agencies where you think that there is a regulation that is completely unreasonable, and just take their money away. That does tend to get their attention,” says Roberts.
Roberts is in line to be the next chair of the Senate Ag Committee. He says he expects to see some scrutiny of the farm bill to make sure it’s working as intended, but he doesn’t expect any significant changes.
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There will surely be some disagreements between President Obama and Republican leaders of the U.S. Senate after they take control of the chamber. But Kansas Senator Pat Roberts says the president and Senate Republicans should start work on issues where they may see eye-to-eye.
Roberts says he’d like to see progress on trade agreements.
“What we ought to do is the low-hanging fruit business. And I think it’s important that our new majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has already met with the president, he’s already talked about trade. There are things that we can agree on, I think, or at least put on discussion. We ought to go after those and get them done,” says Roberts.
Roberts says creating more trade agreements could improve export markets for farmers in the U.S. The senior senator from Kansas is likely to be the next chairman of the Senate Ag Committee.