In a book released today by Congressional Quarterly, Powerful Women: The 25 Most Influential Women in Congress, released as an e-book and in print, Congresswoman Kristi Noem has been named one of the 25 most influential woman in Congress.
According to a release from CQ Roll Call:
Though women have been represented in Congress for nearly 100 years, it has been a long journey to the top. Powerful Women will give readers a brief history of women in Congress and provide an inside look at who has heft in Congress, why they do and how they wield their power, with in-depth profiles of the 25 women on the list and exclusive color photographs. The book will also look at the five freshmen on the rise, women lawmakers who are making their mark in Congress in their inaugural terms in Washington.
“As the leading news organization covering Congress, it’s fitting that these change-agent lawmakers are the subject of CQ Roll Call’s new eBook line,” said David Ellis, chief content officer at CQ Roll Call.
and…
The 25 women named in the book, and the five freshmen on the rise, will be honored at the Rewriting the Rules reception on May 19, 2015, sponsored by Procter & Gamble, in the spirit of their Always #LikeAGirl Rewrite the Rules campaign, focused on empowering young women.
The book touches on Kristi’s compelling story as to why she got into politics…
When her father died, Noem was 22, attending college part time, married and nearly eight months pregnant with her first child. She left school to help take over the family operation. It was then that she found out the family would be assessed estate taxes and would have to decide whether to sell land or take out a loan. Noem said the experience is what kindled her interest in politics. “It was tough for me to reconcile that because we had a tragedy in our family, now we had a financial situation, too. And that’s what got me involved,” she said.
and follows up on her crucial work on the passage of the farm bill.
When she was on the Agriculture Committee, one of Noem’s few public disputes with GOP leaders was over a five-year reauthorization of farm and nutrition programs that the committee approved in 2012. It never received a floor vote – leaders felt that conservative opposition to the bill would sink it – and programs lapsed for several months.
Noem made a public campaign for a floor vote, insisting that safety net provisions were absolutely crucial, particularly in light of severe drought throughout her state.
During the panel’s work on the bill, Noem focused on extensions of livestock disaster programs and “sodsaver” provisions, which cut back federal subsidies in order to remove unintended incentives that induced farmers to convert open prairies into cropland. Noem endorsed billions in reductions to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program but helped defeat deeper SNAP cuts favored by more conservative panel members.
Interested in reading for yourself? Powerful Women: The 25 Most Influential Women in Congress is available on Amazon.