Looming government shutdown. Farm labor shortages. Newhouse’s take on the issues
September is proving to be a busy month in both Washingtons.
While farmers in the Evergreen State enter harvest season, lawmakers thousands of miles away in D.C. are teeing up a budget battle over a stop-gap package to fund the government and avoid a shutdown by Sept. 30, the end of fiscal year.
Congress’ only hops farmer, Rep. Dan Newhouse, knows both struggles. He spoke to the Tri-City Herald on Friday after a luncheon discussion on tax policy with chamber of commerce leaders in Kennewick. The House returned to session from its summer recess just days earlier.
Newhouse, a third-generation farmer, has 75 farm workers picking hops, grapes and corn on his 850-acre Yakima Valley farm. A shortage in the workforce is just one issue farmers are having to deal with these days.
“There’s not an overabundance of labor out there, for sure,” he said, adding later: “Hops still have, like a lot of agricultural commodities, a bit of a supply-and-demand issue: Too much supply and not enough demand. And so, prices are low.”
The threat of immigration raids weighs heavy on migrant and Hispanic farm workers, the Sunnyside Republican said, although there have been no confirmed reports of ICE conducting busts at any of Central Washington’s fields or food processing plants.
But that hasn’t stopped rumors from emptying out facilities on certain work days.
“A lot of people are very concerned about the potential of being deported, and so maybe are reluctant to show themselves out in public. That’s had an impact on the number of people available to work,” he said.
It’s also unclear how many immigration-related arrests have broadly taken place in the region since President Donald Trump started his second term nearly eight months ago promising the “largest deportation operation in American history.”
Timing is also an issue. His hop harvest is in its third week, and Newhouse says fruits and veggies have an expiration and must be picked at just the right time. H2A visa workers have helped to alleviate labor shortages in recent years.
But Newhouse remains bullish that the Trump Administration is best positioned to pass much-needed reforms and modernizations to the nation’s migrant farm worker visa program. Friday’s meeting was another chance for Newhouse to laud the Republicans’ giant domestic package, H.R. 1, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was signed into law earlier this year.
“There’s a lot in this bill for small businesses,” said Chris Eyler, Northwest VP of government affairs for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who joined Newhouse at the local chamber discussion on taxes.
That includes the extension of a 20% pass-through deduction that benefitted Washington businesses to the tune of $5 billion in 2020, as well as permanent breaks on things such as research and development, and capital depreciation.
Newhouse says farmers have a great deal to benefit from H.R. 1 — from crop insurance expansion to trade promotion and research — noting previously that it had “three-quarters of the Farm Bill in it.”
A member on the House Appropriations Committee and Agriculture Committee, Newhouse says he’d like to see Congress pass a “short-term” continuing resolution into November to buy them a bit more time to negotiate new funding levels.
That runs counter to the White House’s goal for a longer resolution that would freeze funding levels well past the calendar year.
But Newhouse is confident House Republicans will rally the troops to pass something in the coming weeks.
“Nobody wins on a government shutdown,” he said. “It ends up costing more money than you think it would save.”
More public events?
In July, more than 18,700 attendees listened in to Newhouse’s telephone town hall, and hundreds of others attended his recent chamber of commerce talk in Pasco. Newhouse was criticized earlier this year for not having any open listening sessions with the general public.
His office staff told the Herald they’re planning to hold another virtual event sometime in the near future, and are working right now to nail down a date.
This story was originally published September 8, 2025 at 12:54 PM.
