ROCHESTER — Being a consumer of political news today can feel like a fat man stuffed to the gills at the dinner table: Not one more bite. Yet, we’re only at the hors d'oeuvres.
Such is the strained digestive state of many citizens. In what? Only month two of the second Trump administration.
So there was no shortage of topics in a wide-ranging interview with U.S. Rep. Brad Finstad, who represents Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District — the first interview with the congressman since Trump became president for the second time.
Finstad, a GOP two-term representative and New Ulm farmer, used a military term to describe how many are processing the first couple of months: Shock and awe.
“I think it’s been challenging at times for everybody to keep up with what is going on day in and day out,” Finstad said during a 35-minute phone conversation. “It has been a fast and furious couple of months.”
Does Finstad worry that Trump’s on-again, off-again tariff policies and the uncertainty they have created could lead to a recession, as Trump refused to rule out in a recent Fox News interview?
Finstad said he was heartened that the everyday cost of things, such as gas and food, appeared to be stabilizing, but described the “tariff conversation” as a “wild card” whose ramifications were hard to assess. He admitted there was a “lot of concern” among businesses and farmers who export their products. Agriculture is big business in the 1st District.
“There is not much meat on the bone left in farm country in regards to liquidity and ability to weather storms,” Finstad said. “So there is concern about, 'alright, what is the ultimate goal in this?'”
In the interview, Finstad indicated that he broadly approved of the work of Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency Musk leads “in looking under the hood of government” and paring it back, despite the chaos it has created. He added he and others have had success in persuading the administration to rethink some of the cuts.
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“We have to make sure that we have a federal government that is lean, mean and effective,” he said.
The interview with Finstad took place on the day Trump indicated he would sign an executive order beginning the process of dismantling the Department of Education.
Finstad did not indicate that he would shed any tears over its elimination.
"How many students does the federal Department of Education teach?" Finstad asked. "The answer is zero."
He said he would work to repurpose the $80 billion now spent on the federal bureaucracy back to local and state entities.
Finstad also said he would fight to preserve NIH funding, another area that Musk has taken a whack at.
Protestors have called upon Finstad to hold in-person town hall meetings. DFL Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has been holding town hall meetings in Iowa and Wisconsin, in an apparent dig at Republicans who have declined to host such events. Walz is holding one in Rochester on Saturday.
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Finstad did not commit to holding an in-person town hall when asked. He said he held a tele-town hall several weeks ago in which 3,000 people participated. He said he had interacted with a broad swath of constituents in the last several weeks, not all of whom agree with his stand on policies, and paid multiple visits to each of the district’s 21 counties.
“I find it funny because Gov. Walz, in the seven years of being a governor, has not held one town hall, and now he’s claiming to be the king of town hall,” Finstad said. “I hope people ask him why he had taken the state into a $6 billion deficit."
The interview had been edited for brevity.
So how do you feel like things are going in the first months of the Trump administration?
So, we’re a couple of months in, and I think what we’re seeing is a certain amount of shock and awe. Part of that comes from every new administration. And I think it’s been at times challenging for everybody to keep up with what is going on day in and day out. It has been a fast and furious couple of months.
So many people voted for President Trump because they saw their standard of living decline under former President Biden due to high inflation. Yet in a recent interview on Fox, Trump refused to rule out the possibility of an economic recession as his tariff policy causes uncertainty and market turbulence. The stock market is down, consumer sentiment has fallen and people’s 401Ks have taken a beating. Are you concerned that Trump is creating this uncertainty?
One thing that I heard loud and clear is the need to stabilize the economy. From those that I’ve had the opportunity to visit from all over the district — all 21 counties — the conversation has been centered around just the everyday cost of things, whether it’s gas, food, inflation or interest rates. And from the everyday consumer, you start to look at some things that point in the direction of some stability. You see inflationary rates settling a hair. You see interest rates settling a hair. You have seen gas prices decrease now. Over the last few weeks, we have seen a drop of about 50% of the wholesale price of eggs.
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The wild card in the short term is the tariff conversation, and what that means for everything from aluminum to ag products. It’s my hope that the American workers and the American entrepreneurs and businesses are protected and have chances to grow and to expand their horizons.
For instance, in the agricultural sector, we have been in ag trade deficit. We have had no meaningful ag trade negotiations that have happened in the last four years. And if tariffs or whatever economic levers are used to get us back to the table to talk about trade deals, to talk about new opportunities, new access to markets. It is the ultimate goal that I think most people in southern Minnesota — the farmers that I talk to — specifically say: That’s the world we have to get to. And I think the question becomes in the short term, what happens in regard to instability in the markets and how do we get through the short term? My hope is that we come through this with better deals, with trade surpluses and not the deficits we’ve been operating under.
Are farmers in your district, in the short term, being hurt by these tariffs or the uncertainty of tariffs?
We haven’t seen it. We haven’t seen it yet, but there is a lot of concern. And I think rightly so, because we’ve been five years into a really, really tough ag market. We’ve been hammered on the input side, and the market has been stale for five years. So the profit margins have evaporated. And so there is not much meat on the bone left in farm country in regards to liquidity and the ability to weather storms. So there is concern about, “alright, what is the ultimate goal in this? What are we going to get out of this? Will we see it at the market? And if so, when?” I think that’s the question marks farmers and businesses across southern Minnesota are asking.
Do you understand what the goals are of President Trump? You hear about remanufacturing or re-industrializing America? Do you understand what ultimately is the destination here?
I don’t think it’s as easy as the checkers move. I think it’s a chess move. We saw the tariff lever being leveraged, for instance, so Mexico would put more resources to the border, to put more troops on the border, to curb fentanyl and sex trafficking challenges that we have. And we saw the same thing in Canada. I think one of the things that President Trump probably does better than most is that when you’re negotiating a new trade deal, if you are telling your negotiating partners exactly what you want, when you want it, how you want it, that is feeding leverage to the person across the table. And so, ultimately, if we are going to use the tariff conversation to do a better job of resourcing or reshoring critical manufacturing, whether it’s from a national security perspective or an economic perspective, we’re seeing this president probably hold cards close to the chest.
You are a member of the House DOGE Caucus, so I think early on you were in sympathy with the idea of cutting the federal government or paring it down. But what we’ve seen from Elon Musk is a “shoot first, ask questions later” approach. And it’s created a lot of chaos. Recently a judge has ordered the reinstatement of 25,000 federal workers. Do you support what Elon Musk is doing right now?
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So, it is high time for our country to take government efficiency seriously. We have legacy software systems, legacy delivery systems, legacy programs that are 30, 40 years old. They are not keeping up with the times. They are not priding themselves on efficiency and effectiveness. I hear that from constituents all the time, the frustrations they have when they have to interact with the federal government. And so, in the broad concept of government efficiency, I fully support a full looking-under-the-hood of government. And I think that’s what we’re doing. I think it’s a healthy exercise. It’s a transparent exercise. If you go to doge.gov, you can see all of the different contracts and all of the different things that the Department of Government Efficiency is finding.
Now, I will say it becomes the work of Congress then to codify a lot of these things, whether we decide that they are worthy of being either cut or downsized or repurposed or saved. But there are little and big things all over our federal government that I think the average person in southern Minnesota would scratch their head on. If you were to ask a southern Minnesotan, do you think your federal tax dollars are spent wisely by giving a contract for $54,000 a year to water eight plants in a federal office building in D.C., I think they would laugh at you. Little and big things add up and we’re a country of $36 trillion of debt. And so if we don’t do it now, my question is when will we ever look at the totality of government and really make sure that we are prioritizing the money to core functions of government.
But it’s also throwing into chaos some of the more essential things the government does. In recent articles, it has been described how DOGE and President Trump have fired USDA employees who hold positions in inspecting our food and protect supply chains from invasive pests; at the Veterans Affairs facilities in Detroit and Denver, staff reductions have led to canceled health programs and left homeless veterans without a dedicated coordinator to help them find an apartment and line up a deposit. In Alabama, job cuts at the Education Department have slowed efforts to get disabled children access to classrooms. It underscores how core government functions are being disrupted, too.
I would probably choose to use more of a scalpel than a sledge hammer on some of these approaches. One of the tools that the OMB and the president has used is taking a look at all of the probationary employees in the federal government — people that have been employed in the federal government for 12 months or less — and put a pause and, in some areas, eliminate those positions. I’ve been working as hard as I can with constituents and the administration when front-line services are being affected. And we’ve been able to get a lot of USDA employees reinstated by fighting for their jobs. Whether it’s front-line USDA employees or scientists that are working on avian influenza, we’ve had success in moving the administration to rethink some of these moves. Ultimately, at the end of the day, we have to make sure that we have a federal government that is lean, mean, and efficient and effective.
Last night, we learned that Gov. Walz is holding a town hall in Rochester. He’s been holding town halls in competitive congressional districts represented by Republicans. It was launched in response to guidance from House Speaker Mike Johnson that GOP representatives skip out on town halls because they’re basically the work of professional protesters. But Walz seems to be highlighting the idea that you have not held an in-person town hall in your district. Do you feel the need to hold a town hall?
I find it funny because Gov. Walz, in the seven years of being governor, has not held one town hall, and now he’s claiming to be the king of town hall. This is a Democrat-hosted political comeback for Gov. Walz. Well, let him scream at the bully pulpit. I hope people ask him why he has taken the state into a $6 billion deficit. Just yesterday, he was cheering and rooting for the decline of stock prices for Tesla, when our very own State Board of Investment, which he chairs, has over a million and a half shares of Tesla stock, which would hurt public pensions.
But to your specific point about accessibility and town halls, we did a tele-town hall a couple of weeks ago where we called over 20,000 people and we had 3,000 people hop onto that call. I have traveled the entire district. In the last few weeks alone, I have visited with farmers, mayors, county commissioners, city council members, small business owners, university officials, financial advisors, health care leaders, nurses, doctors, conservation advocates, housing groups, credit unions, National Guard members and that is just in the last two weeks. Over the last year and half, I’ve had multiple visits in each of our 21 counties. And it’s not just with people that agree with what we’re doing. I have a lot of conversations with folks that have heartburn in certain areas. I try to be as good of a listener as I can be. Our office is constantly hearing from folks from all sides of issues. We’re going to do another tele-town hall in the near future.
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Do you have any plans for an in-person town hall meeting?
We’ve had a couple of protesters come to our office demanding to see me. I find it ironic because I’m actually in D.C. doing the job. And so it’s almost like they’re setting me up for a headline in your newspaper to say, “He’s not here to talk with us.” I will continue to meet with people like I have been the last three years.
So the House Republicans passed a budget proposal that allows for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and calls for $2 trillion in spending cuts. There is a concern among some that some of these cuts could impact Medicaid and other programs. The Congress’s Joint Economic Committee found that if the GOP in Congress passes their proposed budget and cuts Medicaid, tens of thousands of rural residents could lose their health insurance, children would lose their health insurance and more than one in six seniors would lose their nursing home care.
I think this is a good opportunity to talk about process. So we have a multi-step process that is going on right now. We have a House resolution that proposes budget targets, which goes nowhere until we have an agreement with the Senate and the president in regards to what those budget targets will be. And once those targets are agreed upon by all these groups, we will then direct the committees to go to work to figure out how to come up with either cuts or investments that are outlined in the budget resolution.
What we have passed specifically does not say in one line, in one word that there will be cuts to Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. That is not in any of the bills we passed. And as we get through negotiations and figure out what those ultimate numbers will be, I would assume they will be less what the budget resolution will be. That’s where we will ask the questions: Are we protecting Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security for Americans. And are we seeing programs that have been used maybe not in the way that are intended. If you’re an American that is reliant on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, we are going to do everything that we can to protect that and to save that.
This was not on my original question list, but you wake up and there’s new news. I noticed that President Trump is signing an order to begin the process of dismantling the Department of Education. Do you approve of this move?
If we were to be intellectual in this conversation, I think we would ask the basic question: How many students does the federal Department of Education teach? And the answer is zero. The next question would be: What are the results that we’ve seen with the roughly $80 billion a year for the federal Department of Education? If you look at test scores and if you look at the outcomes we’ve seen in our K-12 education system in this country, I think most people would say, “We’re not doing as well as we should be doing."
And so if there is an opportunity for us to have that conversation, to take that $80 billion a year that is funding a federal bureaucracy through the Department of Education, and how do we get that back to the states and local level to deliver classroom teaching to make sure our students and our kids have the best opportunity to learn and become proficient at math, science and reading at grade level, which is not where we are at right now. I think it’s a healthy, worthy conversation for us to have.
And if you look at things like special education and other federally directed funding sources, we’ve heard for 20 years that they have been underfunded. So if this is a way for us to find savings through the federal bureaucracy and send those dollars back to the local level, maybe we can get to a point where we actually fully fund special education. If you look at things like block grants, Pell Grants and direct funding to states — that’s what I’m very supportive of. And I will work hard to make sure that it’s not just to cut the $80 billion, but it’s repurposed back to our local and state entities, so we can make sure that we in our backyard are improving our outcomes.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar was in Rochester this week highlighting her concern over the cuts to the National Institute of Health funding. Of course, that’s a big deal for both the University of Minnesota and Mayo Clinic in Rochester. Do you support these cuts?
I’ve been a strong supporter of NIH funding and cutting-edge medical innovation. We are at the epicenter of health care innovation in southern Minnesota. I’ll continue to advocate for the incredibly necessary projects that are relied upon by so many in our district, in our country. People look to southern Minnesota for leadership on this. I will do whatever I can to fight for those dollars.
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