We also need bold policy ideas. This means building the capacity of local governments and institutions and making large-scale, multiyear investments so they have the staff, expertise and partnerships necessary to achieve their vision.

Policymakers are starting to recognize the need to support lagging places better. An experiment such as the recent Build Back Better Regional Challenge, run by the U.S. Economic Development Administration, offers one template. This $1 billion grant competition is supporting 21 regional partnerships with substantial multiyear investments ($25 million to $65 million) to give them a good opportunity to transform their local economies; a couple of them are predominantly rural.

The Recompete pilot program, authorized in the CHIPS and Science Act, offers the prospect of readiness assistance followed by large multiyear grants to distressed communities where employment is severely lagging. It just received initial funding in the recent omnibus appropriations, but nothing stipulates that rural areas benefit. Even the Millennium Challenge Corporation begun in 2004 by President George W. Bush, which brought a rigorous, evidence-based approach that helped transform international development practice, provides an example of what is possible.

Rural policy is one issue where Republicans and Democrats should be able to find common ground to work together. The new Congress will present a concrete opportunity as it takes up work to pass a new Farm Bill in 2023, a major piece of legislation renewed roughly every five years that — among other things — authorizes rural development programs at the Department of Agriculture.

Yet early indications signal high-profile fights over food stamps, agricultural subsidies and conservation investments — and limited attention to rural development.

Reauthorizing the Economic Development Administration presents another opportunity. Its authorization expired in 2008, and conversations to renew it began in the current Congress but never made it to the finish line. The new Congress can reopen that process to seriously consider the federal role in promoting economic revitalization in left-behind communities.

One thing is clear: Tweaking around the edges will remain ineffective. A serious policy discussion should be dominating the airwaves. Rural America is listening for how public leadership and resources can better support the economic and social renewal of rural communities, but it hears mostly silence.

Tony Pipa is a senior fellow at the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institution and leads the Reimagining Rural Policy Initiative, which seeks to transform U.S. policy to better enable equitable and sustainable development across rural America.