8 Broadcaster Press June 7, 2016 www.broadcasteronline.com Noem Tells Girls Staters To Keep Trying By Shauna Marlette shauna.marlette@plaintalk.net For the members of the 70th annual South Dakota Girls State conference being held in Vermillion this week, one great aspect of the event is being exposed to the current leaders of both our state and our government. It was no different on Thursday when South Dakota Congressional Representative Kristi Noem spoke to the attendees. Her message: “Never give up trying. If you fail, try again.” Noem said that many times when someone fails, they become of failure rather than embracing it as the learning and growing experience it should be. “First of all, don’t be afraid of failing,” she said. “I think many times when we fail at something or aren’t selected for something… you will not try again. Try again. Some of our greatest leaders failed miserably.” She used the example of Walt Disney who was fired from a job for lack of imagination and good ideas to Henry Ford and President Abraham Lincoln. “If you look at Abraham Lincoln, he went broke in business at age 21,” Noem said. “He lost a legislative race. He went broke in business again. Then, he had a nervous breakdown at age 27. After that he ran for congress and lost, he ran for the Senate and lost, then he ran on the vice presidential ticket and lost. He ran again for the Senate and lost, again. Then at age 52, he was President of the United States. We really truly believe he was one of the most humble, servant minded leaders that we have ever had. So, even though he had tried and failed all those times, he continued to try because he wanted to contribute.” She added, finding a path you want to take is great, but if you don’t try new things you might miss out on something fantastic. “We all have those instances in life where if you don’t try something new you won’t find what you love,” Noem said. “Every new experience that I said, ‘OK, I will try that.’ has usually connected me with somebody that has been very important to my life. That is my advice to you today, to keep doing things and trying new things. Something you think you may do or a talent you have may not develop as you get older. You may find out I am really good at this, and it will open new doors for your future.” Noem went on to say that the attendees of Girls State should be proud of what they have already accomplished. “I want you to know that I believe you are leading right where you are today,” Noem said. “You have so many people that are watching you and opportunities for you to serve, that I don’t want you to think that what you are doing today is not important. Your generation is volunteering and serving your communities at double the rate of my generation. 14.5 million of you are currently involved in volunteer activities.” However she questioned why they do not vote at the same rate. “Maybe you don’t think your generation can make a difference when it comes to voting,” she said. “We need to change that. But it isn’t that you don’t care about your communities, you prove that by the amount of time you volunteer.” During her visit with Girls State, Noem explained what path her life had taken to lead her to serving in government. “When I was in college my father passed away,” she said. “We received a letter from the Federal Government saying we owed death taxes. There is a law that the Federal Government that says that everytime that someone passes away the family has to pay taxes on everything they owned. Well, we were farmers so we had land, machinery and cattle, but we didn’t have money in the bank.” Noem said she was confused why the government would have a law that would cause families suf- • AUTOMOTIVE COLLISION REPAIR • PAINT • FRAMEWORK • GLASS REPLACEMENT fering a tragedy have to pay them money. “It made me mad,” she said. “The only option I really had at that time was to take out a loan. So, for ten years, we paid those taxes and made payments on the loan. It made it very hard for us to keep our family farm together. So, I decided that we needed more people who were running family businesses who lived everyday normal lives, making our laws so they would know what the everyday consequences were of those laws and how they hit families.” She added that in South Dakota, just that one death tax can be a catastrophe for a lot of family businesses. “So, I decided to run for the legislature in 2006,” she said. “I was only there for a couple of weeks before I realized that leadership controls everything. They decide what committees a bill goes to. They can decide if they don’t like a bill to have the committee kill it, if they like it, it might go forward. So, my second term I decided to run for assistant majority leader. My colleges of the house elected me to that. In 2010, I decided to run for congress and was elected to represent the state in Washington DC.” As for what it is like in Wash- ington, D.C. the easy answer is very busy. “I have a pretty typical story for a lot of people in South Dakota,” Noem said. “I get up every day about 5:30 or 6 a.m. I live in my office, which most of you might be aware of. The first year I was in Washington I rented an apartment, but it was just a little room in a basement of someone’s home and it cost me nearly $2,000 a month and I was never there. I would leave by 6 a.m. or 7 a.m. and I wouldn’t get home until 11 p.m.” She said that she knew that some of the other members of Congress were living in their offices and now there are probably 30 or 40 of them that do it. “I have a couch that pulls out into a bed right there and there is a gym in the basement,” Noem said. “So, I get up in the morning and go down to the gym, do my work out and get ready for the day. Our meetings start by 7:30 or 8 a.m.” She also noted that it is interesting how many people from South Dakota are in Washington each week. “Every Wednesday, Senators Thune and Rounds and I have a coffee for South Dakotans that are in town,” she said. “We give them an update about what we are working on and they can ask us questions. We invite everyone who is in DC for that week to come for coffee. We typically have 60 and 100 people every single week. That is how many people are there either touring, on family vacations or working on issues that are important to them. My typical day is filled with at least 10-15 different meetings with South Dakotans and then we have committee hearings, as well. Usually we wrap up at about 9-10 p.m.” Noem said that she is very proud to be the first South Dakotan USDA Celebrates National Homeownership Month Hartington Tree LLC TREE TRIMMING, REMOVALS & TRANSPLANTING HOURS: TREES FOR SALE EVERGREEN • SHADE • ORNAMENTAL M-F 9AM-6PM SAT 9AM-12PM Yankton 605-260-1490 Hartington 402-254-6710 1205 CARR STREET • VERMILLION • 605.670.0471 BlainesBodyShop@gmail.com Serving Southeast SD & Northeast NE for 20 Years Kent & Kyle Hochstein • Licensed Arborists www.hartingtontree.com Your New Home At... Westbrook Estates Located On West City Limits Road 2508 Wynn Way • $164,800 900 sq. ft. on main, 2 bedrooms, 1 bath, laundry in lower level, 2 stall garage, appliances included. Lots Available From $24,900-$26,900 Additional Homes Available $164,800-$198,800 Additional Floor Plans Coming Soon! ankton Area Progressive Growth Economic Development 416 Broadway • Yankton, SD • 664-5555 Lisa Williams Randy Kussman Stacy Schramm Norene Gibson Deb Specht to serve on the Ways and Means Committee. “About a year and a half ago, I was appointed to the Ways and Means Committee,” she said. “Somebody told me when I was working to get on this committee that it was the committee that had the most ways to be mean because it has jurisdiction over taxes, trade, social security, Medicare, entitlement programs and all of our foster care programs go through there. About 80 percent of what we are doing in the House goes through the Ways and Means Committee and I decided that I was going to work to get on that committee because if a lot of the legislation that we signed in to law was going to be completed in that committee, I wanted to make sure that someone that came from a rural state like South Dakota was weighing in on the issues.” She also noted that one of the things she most enjoys serving the state is voting in the House Chambers. “Because there are 100 senators in the Senate, they vote by voice,” Noem explained. “They call their name and they vote yes or no audibly, because there are 435 members of the House we can’t do that. We vote by electronic machine. If you look at the House floor the décor is all beautiful woodwork and historic wallpaper. When it comes time to vote they turn on the voting machine and all of a sudden above the speakers head it shows all of our names, all 435 of us.” She said the system tallies and keeps track how the vote is going: if it is passing or failing. “All of it lights up like a huge billboard and we start to vote,” Noem said. “When the vote is over it tells us exactly how everyone voted and if the bill passed or failed. Then they shut the machine off and the chambers look exactly how they would have looked 100 years ago. It is a really neat process for me to be able to vote on something that is important to South Dakota. What is even cooler is that that whole system was installed and built by a South Dakota Company – Daktronics. For me it is pretty special to vote in Washington DC and I get to do it on something that South Dakota enabled us to do.” Dan Specht Jill Ward WASHINGTON – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today kicked off National Homeownership Month by highlighting USDA’s ongoing role to help people buy homes in rural areas. “Owning a home helps promote stable communities and is one of the best ways American families can build wealth,” Vilsack said. “During the Obama Administration, USDA has helped more than one million rural families and individuals realize their dreams of homeownership. This year, our celebration of National Homeownership Month will recognize partnerships with some of the many organizations that have worked with us to make this achievement possible.” USDA builds strong relationships with lenders, home builders, realtors, community development organizations, non-profits and housing finance authorities to provide homeownership opportunities to very-low, low- and moderate-income individuals in rural areas. USDA’s Guaranteed Loan program, for instance, increases access to mortgage financing in rural communities by offering approved lenders a 90 percent loan guarantee to offset their risk if a borrower defaults. By partnering with approved public and private lenders, more than one million low- to moderate-income families have bought and refinanced homes in rural America through this program during the Obama Administration. The program requires no down payment from the applicant, offers a fixed interest rate, and has a 30-year loan term. The Department recently announced a series of changes that will make it faster and cheaper for rural homeowners with USDA-backed mortgages to refinance their loans and save money with a lower interest rate. The changes take effect June 2. Interested homeowners with USDA loan guarantees should contact their lender about refinance procedures. Homeowners with mortgages through USDA’s Direct Loan program should contact a USDA housing specialist. In addition to mortgage financing, USDA provides grants and loans to help rural homeowners make improvements or repairs, such as removing health and safety hazards or making accessibility modifications for people with disabilities. USDA has invested more than $137 billion since 2009 to support rural homeownership. In 2015 alone, the Department invested $19.5 billion to help more than 148,500 rural families buy or make repairs and safety upgrades to their homes. USDA created more homeownership opportunities through seven years of the Obama Administration than during any previous seven-year period in the single-family housing program’s history. USDA employees will celebrate National Homeownership Month throughout June with events across the nation that demonstrate the commitment to provide access to affordable housing for low- and moderateincome rural residents. To learn more about USDA’s observance of National Homeownership Month, please visit our Facebook page or contact a Rural Development State Office near you. USDA Rural Development (@ usdaRD) has helped 1.1 million rural residents buy homes since 2009; funded nearly 7,000 community facilities such as schools, public safety and health care facilities; and invested $31.3 billion in 963 electric projects that have financed more than 185,000 miles of transmission and distribution lines serving 4.6 million rural residents. USDA also has invested $11 billion to start or expand 103,000 rural businesses; and helped bring high-speed Internet access to nearly 6 million rural residents and businesses. For more information, visit www.usda.gov/results.