Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville touched on a handful of topics last Wednesday during his address to local business and civic leaders, including the delayed transfer of the U.S. Space Command, national security and helping farmers with an enhanced Farm Bill being worked on in Congress.

Tuberville spoke for 25 minutes at the Huntsville/Madison County Chamber Washington Update luncheon at the Von Braun Center. More than 900 attendees included local dignitaries and business leaders from north Alabama. Tuberville was in town for a few days for meetings, saying he was glad to be out of the “clown show” in Washington. He was elected in 2020 and is Alabama’s senior senator following the retirement of Richard Shelby.

Tuberville has seats on the Senate Armed Services; Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry; Health, Education, Labor and Pensions; and Veterans’ Affairs committees. He also is on several sub-committees. The Armed Services and Veterans’ Affairs committees give him key insights to national security situations. Tuberville thanked the area’s defense and security businesses, and started his non-prepared remarks with what’s happening with the delayed Space Command move from Colorado to Redstone Arsenal.

“There’s a lot more things coming here and Space Command, I will say, Lord, we’re fighting every day,” he said. “It should be here already. It’s already been appointed here…we’ve made it to the point where it should be here. We can’t get an answer. I’ve gotten to know the Secretary of Air Force well, and when I call him he’ll tell me again, I’ll let you know.

“We have to build back strength. Strength is how you can stay out of war. Ronald Reagan said that. In this county, the thing that we do in the state is make this country better and stronger. So, in the Armed Services Committee, we’re getting ready to do the NDAA, which is a budget. We’re getting close to a trillion dollars a year. You know, that’s mind boggling. We’re not even spending 3 percent of our GDP; it probably should be 5 percent like it was years ago. It probably should be 5 percent. But we’re spending too much money on other things. We don’t have enough for $32 trillion in debt. And we cannot continue to go that route.

“We live in a dangerous world, probably more dangerous right now ever in my life. We’ve got fires all over the world. Thank goodness, we’ve got the strongest military.”

Tuberville said small businesses and universities are as important as north Alabama’s large companies. He said the smaller companies are providing equally important jobs, services and products critical to continued economic growth and national defense.

“In the last few years, we had a lot of people go out of business. We had a lot of struggle,” he said. “Hopefully, you got through it. Small businesses are the backbone of our country, and really our national security. We have a lot of small businesses in Huntsville. You’re here today because you believe in what you’re doing. You have a knack for doing what you’re doing. It’s the small things that count.”

Putin: ‘Murderer, Thug’

Tuberville returned recently from a security conference in Germany, saying we’re only getting a glimpse about the depth of the situation in Ukraine and elsewhere.

He said Putin “is a murderer, a thug” and “should have never done what he’s done.” Despite support from the U.S. and its European allies, Ukraine faces a long war against Russia with no clear end in sight.

“We’ve got a huge problem. What you see on TV is just a little bit of what is really happening,” Tuberville said. “Not to get into the weeds, but it’s a tough fight. I think Putin is a murderer. He’s a thug. He’s the guy that should have never done what he’s done. We’re in it. I just don’t know how we are gonna get out. I don’t know how Ukraine will get out. It would be like a junior high team playing against a college football team. They don’t have the numbers. They don’t have the weapons, but they have the will and the will of life.

“And I’m proud that we’re representing them, to a point. But you are playing a big role, a lot of you and your defense contractors, in what’s going on in Ukraine. We’ll see what happens. Hopefully, by spring, we’ll come up with a solution with this because the people that we’re losing is a lot more than people can imagine.”

Working for Farmers

Huntsville and Madison County grew from agriculture to military defense from the 1940s when Redstone Arsenal was established. The two have co-mingled ever since. It’s no surprise to see cotton fluff on roadsides off trucks transporting loads to a gin, or military aircraft coming to or from the arsenal.

Tuberville said fighting for farmers is one of his top priorities, especially with the ongoing negotiations about the Farm Bill. The current bill was signed into law by President Trump in 2018. Reauthorization requires Congress to agree on programs and payouts. The bill includes a wide range of programs including dairy, conservation, nutrition, rural development, credit, forestry and more.

“We’re building an infrastructure in this country to help not just us, but to feed people (elsewhere),” Tuberville said. “For some reason this president wants to do away with fossil fuel. It’s impossible. You can’t do it. But they’re doing it. And you know, that’s hurting our farmers. We have almost doubled the price of fertilizer in this country. We can’t grow enough to feed everybody. And we’re putting farmers out of business. As we talked about it in our farm hearings, we lose our family farms. I mean, it is going to be devastating. Not just us, but people all over the world who eat the food we grow.

“We’re getting ready to start a five-year process. We’ve been working on it for two years. It’s called the Farm Bill. This year, for the first time, it will be over a trillion dollars. And we’re going to help our farmers, we’re going to try to get them back on their feet. We’re going to try to talk some sense into this White House where we can start making it feasible for our farmers to make a living. Because if you’ve got a farm, and you want to pass it down to your kids, you want them to stay and work on that farm. If they can’t, they’re gonna sell, they can close it down and still go into something else. So, this farm bill is huge.”

Tuberville said along with “making weapons and missiles, rockets, and hand grenades” in Alabama, “it is as much about agriculture and food to keep this country safe. Because if we don’t, we’re gonna have a huge problem.” He said farmers and foresters in the state and U.S. need to be helped to stay in business with rising prices of equipment, seed, fertilizers battling against export issues as well as problems with the weather.

“We have to find ways to keep our family farms intact, and we’re going to do that this year with the Farm Bill. We’re working hard on that. Hopefully, we can have that done by the end of the year and, so, over the next five years, they can be covered. They can’t control the price. They can’t control the weather. And so that’s one thing that we’re going to work very hard on, to make sure we have enough crop insurance to cover our farmers, to make sure if something does drastically happen, that they can keep their farm another year to go on down the road. And hopefully the next year make a profit.”

Tuberville described Washington as a clown show, but said he’s constantly buoyed by trying to find common ground. He laughingly described working on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee with Sen. Bernie Sanders as “a thrill a minute,” but said the positive with Sanders is his ability to debate bluntly so everything’s on the table.

“It is a situation where at the end of the day, most of us can sit down and talk civil with each other,” he said, “understanding that our different views sometimes co-mingle and we can help make this country better. So, it’s an interesting job.”