NORTH WEBSTER - There’s no doubt in 2nd District U.S. Congressman Rudy Yakym’s mind who is going to win the election on Tuesday, Nov. 5.
“It’s going to be a great night here in Kosciusko County. We are focused on electing Republicans up and down the ballot. Not only here locally, but also across the state and nationally. I firmly believe that one week from tonight, Donald Trump will become the president-elect for the United States. I also believe that we’re going to take the Senate and Republicans will also hold the House,” Yakym said in an interview Tuesday, Oct. 29 at the Kosciusko County GOP Hall of Fame Dinner. “So I think it’s going to be a great night for Republicans.”
He said when you come to places like the GOP dinner in Kosciusko County, “You can feel the energy on the ground. People have absolutely had enough of the open border policy of Kamala Harris. They’ve had enough of the inflation, they’ve had enough of weakness on the international stage that we’ve projected, which has allowed our enemies to attack our allies. They’ve had enough of that, so our country is ready for new leadership, and one week from tonight, I believe Donald Trump will be elected president of the United States.”
If the Republicans do take the White House and Senate and hold on to the House, Yakym said he thinks the first thing that people will see happen when Trump is sworn in as president on Jan. 20 is that Trump will “fulfill the promise that he’s made, which is the number one issue that I hear about in this district, and that is to secure the southern border. The southern border has been wide open under Kamala Harris. Let’s not forget, she’s the border czar that was put in charge of securing the border, and it got progressively worse every month on her watch.”
Yakym said Trump has promised to secure the southern border.
“That will be, I’m very confident, his first priority and the first thing he will do and he will do it when he’s president of the United States,” he stated.
The national debt this week is $35.81 trillion, according to the U.S. Department of Treasury. Asked how the Republicans would tackle reducing that debt and inflation, Yakym replied, “The very first thing House Republicans did when we took office and took majority last year was we stopped all of the trillion dollars spending packages over and above our normal appropriations process. Those extra trillion dollars spending packages is what caused and led to the inflation we’ve been seeing around the country.”
Everyone’s costs have gone up faster than their incomes, he said, and that’s caused so many problems.
“So the first thing we’ve done is we’ve stopped that,” Yakym said. “The second thing we will do next year is we will extend a lot of the Trump tax cuts that happened him, his leadership, in 2017. Doing those things will help continue to grow the economy because we’ve got to grow our way out of this, while at the same time also holding the line on spending in Washington, D.C.”
If Republicans should not win both houses of Congress and the presidency, Yakym said he will still fight for the people of his district.
“What I do every day here in this district is that I travel the district, listen to Hoosiers, know what’s on their minds and then go to Washington, D.C., and fight for them and fight for their interests. So, whether in the House we’re in the majority or the minority, I will never stop fighting for Hoosiers and making sure that their voice is heard in the nation’s capital,” he stated.
Yakym said his job wouldn’t change regardless of which party is in the majority.
“I’m fighting for Hoosiers, whether we’re in the majority or the minority. It’s the same job, fighting for Hoosiers, fighting for their interest. Knowing what’s on the minds of Hoosiers and then making sure their interests are reflected in Washington, D.C., and that they have a federally elected representative that fights for them every day,” he stated.
Congress must approve a new federal farm bill every five years. The 2018 Farm Bill was enacted Dec. 20, 2018, according to the USDA Farm Service Agency. On Nov. 16, 2023, President Joe Biden signed into law HR 6363, the Further Continuing Appropriations and Other Extensions Act, 2024, which extended the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018. The extension allowed authorized programs to continue through Sept. 30, 2024.
The Sept. 30 deadline passed without a push from lawmakers to pass a new farm bill or an extension, according to the Washington State Standard. Congress’s lame-duck session begins Nov. 12 - a week after the election - so they will have to work on the farm bill then before benefits run out at the end of the year.
Yakym said, “The Farm Bill has cleared the Agriculture Committee. GT Thompson, our Republican chair there, has gotten that cleared out of committee. It hasn’t got to the floor yet because we don’t have the votes - either Republicans or Democrats. They don’t have the votes. We’ve got to have a strong farm bill that makes sure that the agriculture interest here in Indiana are well-represented. We spent a lot of time here in the Hoosier state, traveling around, listening to our farmers. I’ve got a great relationships with Agriculture Chair GT Thompson, and we spend a lot of time with him, making sure that the Hoosier farmer interests are accurately reflected in that farm bill, and I’m proud to say that, essentially, all of the priorities that I heard from our Hoosier farmers, we were able to make sure that they were in the farm bill that they’ve cleared out of committee.”
On the topic of war in Israel and Gaza, and Ukraine and Russia, Yakym said that weakness on the international stage from the United States of America - going back to the weakness of the Biden-Harris administration - “invites our enemies to attack our allies. What we have to do, one week from tonight, is elect Donald Trump as president of the United States and he will once again restore the strength of America that we’ve projected on the international stage that we did under his leadership when he was president. He will restore that and I’m very confident that our enemies will stop attacking our allies when we, once again, start projecting strength on the international stage.”