{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.marshall.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/senator-marshall-i-want-the-next-generation-to-have-the-same-shot-at-the-american-dream-i-had/", "Senator Marshall: I Want the Next Generation to Have the Same Shot at the American Dream I Had", "2026-07-20", "2026", "2026-07", "Republican", "Senate", "KS", "Roger Marshall", "M001198", "www.marshall.senate.gov", "marshall", "https://www.marshall.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/", "scraper", "Senator Marshall Joins 13th & Park Podcast\n\nWashington \u2013 U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-Kansas), joined Adam Goodman on the 13th & Park Podcast to discuss his 10th statewide tour of Kansas and what he is doing to address the issues Kansans are facing, what bipartisanship looks like in Washington, the Rural Health Transformation Fund and finding a solution to the challenges of rural healthcare, President Trump\u2019s support for American farmers, and how he hopes to give the next generation of Kansans the same chance at the American Dream that he had.\n\nClick HERE for the full interview.\n\nHighlights from the interview include:\n\nOn what he learned from his 10th tour of every Kansas county:\n\n\u201cWell, I think the number one thing I hear is the cost of gas, the cost of groceries. We had four years of cumulative inflation under Joe Biden, so housing went up 50%, healthcare, childcare. So, people are still feeling the brunt of that in so many ways. On the one hand, you have the strong economy \u2014 we can talk about that more \u2014 but there is a group of folks out there, typically under the age of 40, and I call this a slow-lane economy. They graduated from college with a lot of debt, their credit cards are maxed, they didn\u2019t buy their home. They chose to do other things than buy their home, and now homes are unaffordable. If you\u2019re under the age of 40 and you\u2019re a person in middle-income America, you cannot afford to get into a house unless mom and dad help. And then your property insurance and your property taxes are so high and a high interest rate \u2014 you know, it\u2019s really hard right now.\u201d\n\n\u201cI always figure prosperity and security are my goals. I want your family to be safe and secure, and I want you to be prosperous as well. So certainly, a focus on what\u2019s going on with the economy \u2014 sitting down very specifically with people in manufacturing, agriculture, ranching and targeting those types of people. I figure if economically you\u2019re in good shape, your family\u2019s safe and sound, then those are good starters. So, trying to target housing \u2014 housing\u2019s a top three issue back home, so every community that I go to, \u2018How\u2019s housing? What\u2019s working? What\u2019s not working?\u2019 And even part of it is spreading the good word. Salina, Kansas is knocking it out of the park right now on housing. Well, how come? They\u2019ve got, first of all, a young lady that\u2019s doing a great job \u2014 she understands the grant systems inside and out, and she\u2019s out hustling. And so, when I go to the next community, and they say, \u2018We just can\u2019t figure it out,\u2019 I say, \u2018Hey, why don\u2019t you pick up the phone and call Lucy over in Salina and say How is she doing it? Matter of fact, invite her to have a cup of coffee and come over and talk to your city commissioners or whatever it is as well.\u2019 So, I\u2019m kind of out there identifying best practices. Gosh, childcare: when I was in Congress nine years ago, we started doing roundtables on childcare. Fentanyl poisoning: I was one of the first people in the country saying, \u2018My gosh, this fentanyl poisoning is going to be really, really, really bad.\u2019 Mental health in farmers, suicide in farmers, we started doing roundtables with that, and trying to push people together and say, \u2018How are we going to solve this? One community at a time \u2014 your community\u2019s way, not Washington D.C.\u2019s way.\u2019 And then, you bring those concepts back to D.C. and put loose guardrails around it and say let\u2019s empower each one of their communities to figure out housing, or childcare, whatever, to help them figure out how to do it their way.\u201d\n\nOn passing Whole Milk for Healthy Kids and bipartisanship in Washington, D.C.:\n\n\u201cWhole milk is a very simple example: whole milk was taken out of our school systems by the Obama administration \u2014 typical Washington, D.C. telling Kansans what we should eat or drink. And really there wasn\u2019t enough science to say why we should take it away from children, and then because of that, we have several generations of children that didn\u2019t drink any milk. Have you ever drunk 1% milk? It\u2019s horrible. I was raised on whole milk. So, we found a partner \u2014 the senator from Vermont, Peter Welch. He and I have a real relationship; we work out in the gym together. Not that we try to, but we\u2019re kind of on that same timetable between four and six o\u2019clock. We sneak into the gym; we don\u2019t tell our staff where we\u2019re hiding \u2014 they can\u2019t walk in there because it\u2019s off limits to staff. So, it took leadership on his part. Amy Klobuchar, the ranking member of Ag, did a great job blessing it and getting it across the finish line as well, and of course, John Boozman, the chairman of the Ag Committee on our side. So, it takes leadership, and that\u2019s how we get it done. But the problem up here now, if it\u2019s anything on the front page \u2014 if you\u2019re a Democrat supporting anything that the Republicans or administration are doing, you\u2019re going to get crucified in the nightly media. And vice versa is true as well. So, on the major issues, it\u2019s going to remain a challenge. Like funding the government.\u201d\n\nOn the Rural Health Transformation Fund and solution to rural healthcare:\n\n\u201cSo, I\u2019m so proud of what we\u2019re doing with these monies. If you think about rural America right now, first of all, we have a chronic illness problem \u2014 and that\u2019s true wherever we live. And then number two is: what do we need in rural America for healthcare? Well, what you really want is an A+ emergency room and then outpatient services: a pharmacist, physical therapy. These hospitals in rural America, in rural Kansas, average 1.6 inpatients per night \u2014 a 25-bed hospital, they\u2019re averaging 1.6 inpatients. So, if I gave you a 25-bed hotel, and you averaged 1, you would say, \u2018No, I can\u2019t afford the taxes on it and the upkeep on it,\u2019 right? So, we need a different model. And what we\u2019re hoping with this funding is that there\u2019s a transition to this next model. And we have something out there: we developed a prototype called a Rural Emergency Hospital. By the way, on average these hospitals are losing $600,000 a year \u2014 that is what the average loss is on these Critical Access Hospitals. So, every one of those that we\u2019ve done, that have flipped from this traditional Critical Access Hospital to this Rural Emergency Hospital model, has gone from losing money to making a little bit of money. And then we\u2019ve got to talk about primary care just for a second. 90% of Americans have a chronic disease. So, what are we going to do to address this chronic disease problem? And the solution in rural Kansas may be different than it is in suburbia or urban America.\u201d\n\nOn agriculture in Kansas and President Trump\u2019s support for American farmers:\n\n\u201cPeople in agriculture are the salt of the earth \u2014 there\u2019s no doubt about it. Point at the cattle industry \u2014 most farmers also have some cattle, and that cattle industry is so important to Kansas. If you put all of our commodities together, we\u2019re the largest grower in the world of wheat and typically lots of soybeans, corn, and sorghum \u2014 but our cattle industry is worth maybe 5 or 10 times more in dollars and cents than all those others put together. When we turn that corn into beef, or we turn soybeans into bacon, or we turn sorghum into ethanol, that\u2019s when the American farmer is making money. We have taught Brazil how to grow \u2014 they can grow two crops a year to our one crop. So, we\u2019re never going to be able to outproduce other countries like we used to \u2014 we can\u2019t make it up just on volume. So, you know, my message to them is focus on value-added products. And that would take us to 45Z, which is a tax credit that I worked on with President Trump. A week before the election, I took four farmers to Mar-a-Lago and sat down with the President and said, \u2018Mr. President, I got one request \u2014 and that\u2019s that you support this 45Z tax credit, because that\u2019s going to beef up our ethanol industry as well as the jet fuel. And farmers and ranchers are going to get 40-60 cents a bushel more if they practice regenerative agriculture.\u2019 So, this is the win-win. This is where I put my medical mind with my agriculture mind, put all the pieces together, and then address their chronic illnesses. If they\u2019re doing environmentally friendly practices, if they\u2019re growing more with less, if we\u2019re putting more nutrients back in the soil and having healthier food, we\u2019re going to reward the farmer to do that. And the mechanism to get it done was through this 45Z tax credit for ethanol, and then biologically derived jet fuel.\u201d\n\nOn what he wants to leave for the next generation of Kansans:\n\n\u201cYeah, I want them to have the same shot at the American dream that I had. I\u2019m a fifth-generation farm kid, a first-generation college student. My American dream was to go to med school and go back and practice medicine in rural Kansas, raise a family in safety, security, and freedom. So, I want to protect their future, and I hope they have the same shot at the American dream that I have, and they maintain the same values that we had. And I think those go hand in hand.\u201d\n\n###", 1, "2026-07-21T07:32:02Z", "2026-07-21T07:33:33Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.marshall.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/senator-marshall-i-want-the-next-generation-to-have-the-same-shot-at-the-american-dream-i-had/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8772748988121748, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}