Washington Watch: A Carter returns to D.C. with a cause
WASHINGTON -- It's been nearly 30 years since Rosalynn Carter and her husband left the White House to return home to Plains, Ga.
But here she was, back in town again, promoting the same cause she was promoting back when she was the first lady of the nation and even before that, the first lady of Georgia.
Mrs. Carter's campaign for better mental health care began during Jimmy Carter's first run for governor in Georgia. It remains her pet issue to this day.
In Washington, she wrapped up a weeklong tour for her latest book on the subject, "Within Our Reach: Ending the Mental Health Crisis."
She also had lunch with the current first lady, Michelle Obama, to discuss her cause. In between, she did some lobbying for mental health issues, meeting with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, whose father was a governor of Ohio when Carter was governor of Georgia, and with Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, who was an intern at the White House when the Carters lived there. She had dinner with a former press secretary.
"It's always nice to come back to Washington," Mrs. Carter told me in a brief interview. With her simple green sweater and black slacks, tinted glasses shielding her eyes, she appeared every bit the Southern grandmother she has become. "I have a lot of friends here."
Mrs. Carter said her tireless attempt to build a movement around mental health has "its ups and downs."
Currently, with better awareness of issues like post-traumatic stress disorder that's prevalent in soldiers returning from the Middle East, things are up for Mrs. Carter and her cause, she told me.
"I think the movement is too strong now to go back down," she said.
While in Washington, Mrs. Carter also took her first tour of the National Portrait Gallery, which includes a portrait of her husband that she saw for the very first time.
"I don't come to Washington that often," she explained when asked why she hasn't seen it before. "I'm busy. I work all the time."
And then it was back to the place where the rest of the world outside Georgia got to know the Carter family: the White House.
There, she and her granddaughter participated in an early Mother's Day celebration Friday with the Obamas and family members of other former presidents. They roamed the halls of the place she, Jimmy and daughter Amy called home for four years.
"It said to bring your daughters," Mrs. Carter said, "but Amy couldn't come."
CHAMBLISS: DOES THE GOVERNMENT THINK ORGANICS ARE BETTER THAN BIG AG?
Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss says he thinks the country may be spending too much time and money promoting organic farmers.
As ranking Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee, Georgia's senior senator and others sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture complaining about the $65 million the government has spent on a program called "Know Your Farmers, Know Your Food."
Chambliss and his fellow senators don't have a problem promoting agriculture. But they do have a problem with the fact that the Agriculture Department seems to be promoting organic and small-town farmers over traditional farmers.
"Unfortunately, this spending doesn't appear geared toward conventional farmers who produce the vast majority of our nation's food supply, but instead is aimed at small, hobbyist and organic producers whose customers generally consist of affluent patrons at urban farmers markets," Chambliss and others wrote.
In reply, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack defended the program. Promoting regional and direct-to-consumer farmers, Vilsack wrote, is needed more than promoting Big Ag.
"Cultivating these new markets -- not replacing old ones -- is critical to revitalizing rural America," Vilsack wrote.
