From The Nation: http://www.thenation.com/blog/174094/house-gop-plans-even-deeper-food-stamp-cuts
George Zornick
on April 29, 2013
Lost in the shuffle of last year’s big fiscal cliff deal was the deal that didn’t happen on a new farm bill.
One of the major points of contention was funding for food stamps through the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, run by the US Department of Agriculture. Republicans in the House proposed steep cuts: $16.5 billion over the next decade, which would eliminate food assistance to as many as 3 million low-income Americans. The Senate countered with a farm bill cutting $4.5 billion from SNAP over the same time period.
There was simply no deal to be had on the farm bill, and so Congress passed a simple extension until September 30. Now Congress has to start over—all prior versions of the farm are dead, since there’s a new Congress.
And this time around Republicans are only going to increase, not moderate, their demands for steep food stamp cuts. Representative Frank Lucas, the chair of the House Agriculture Committee, told the Capital Press this weekend that the new House farm bill will mandate $20 billion in SNAP cuts over the next ten years.
Democratic leadership in the House is already blasting Lucas’s proposal. “SNAP doesn’t just offer much-needed support to vulnerable Americans, it provides a significant boost to the economy, nearly doubling the return of every dollar we put into it,” Drew Hammill, communications director for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, told The Nation. “Just when you think you’ve seen the extent of [the House GOP’s] misguided priorities, they strike at the ability of millions of low-income children, the elderly and American families to put food on the table.”
There’s going to be a lot of blowback to Lucas’s proposal—not only from Democrats, particularly in urban areas, but from some Republicans, particularly in the Midwest, who know that cutting food stamps depresses food sales, which in turn hurts farmers.
Some other Republicans, like Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi, oppose the cuts because so many people in their state rely on nutrition assistance. “I come from a state where we have higher-percentage participation [than the national average],” Cochran said last year. “I have never had to apologize in Mississippi for supporting it,” he said, referring to food stamps.
Continue reading at: http://www.thenation.com/blog/174094/house-gop-plans-even-deeper-food-stamp-cuts
