We also need bold policy ideas. This means building the capacity of local governments and organisations, and making large-scale investments over many years so they have the staff, expertise and partnerships they need. to achieve its vision.
Policymakers are beginning to recognize the need to better support those lagging behind. An experiment like the recent Better Rebuild Regions Challenge, run by the US Economic Development Administration, offers a sample. This $1 billion funding contest is supporting 21 regional partners with substantial multi-year investments ($25 million to $65 million) to give them a good chance to transform the landscape. their local economy; a few of them are mainly rural.
The Recompetition pilot program, authorized in the Science and CHIPS Act, offers the prospect of ready-made assistance followed by large multi-year grants to struggling communities in the workplace. are seriously lagging behind. It received initial funding only in recent budget allocations, but nothing stipulates that rural areas benefit. Even the Millennium Challenge Corporation, founded by President George W. Bush in 2004, takes a rigorous, evidence-based approach to transform international development practice, providing an example of what maybe.
Rural policy is an issue where Republicans and Democrats can find common ground to work together. The new Congress will present a concrete opportunity when it comes to the need to pass a new Farm Bill by 2023, a key piece of legislation renewed about every five years that – among other things – allows programs to rural development at the Ministry of Agriculture.
Early signs, however, signal stiff struggles over food stamps, agricultural subsidies and conservation investment – and limited interest in rural development.
Reauthorizing the Economic Development Administration presents another opportunity. Its license expired in 2008, and discussions to renew it began in the current Congress but never reached its destination. The new Congress could reopen that process to seriously consider the federal role in fostering economic recovery in communities that were left behind.
One thing is clear: Tweaking around the edges won’t work. A serious policy discussion should prevail over the airwaves. Rural America is listening to how public leadership and resources can better support the economic and social renewal of rural communities, but mostly they hear silence.
Tony Pipa is a senior fellow at the Center for Sustainability at the Brookings Institution and leads Re-imagining the Rural Policy Initiativeseeks to transform U.S. policy to better facilitate equitable and sustainable development across rural areas of the United States.
