Senate passes Farm Bill… Don’t you mean Food Stamp bill…

The Wall Street Journal  06/22/12  Damain Paletta & Janet Hook

“Senate Passes Farm Bill that Curtails Aid”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304898704577480802726268554.html

The Senate passed a sweeping package of farm and nutrition-assistance programs that would reduce spending by billions of dollars partly by ending direct subsidies to farmers, setting up a showdown with House Republicans who have demanded steeper spending cuts in exchange for their support.

The legislation with a total cost of about $1 trillion over 10 years would end the two-decade-old program that sends $5 billion to farmland owners and investors each year-roughly one-third of total U.S. farm subsidies-regardless of whether they raise crops.  The also would expand the federal crop insurance programs, which offers subsidies to farmers and insurance companies, through lawmakers agreed this week to curtail assistance for larger farms.

The largest item in the Senate package is the projected $768 billion 10-year outlay for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Commonly Known as food stamps, which helps low-income families purchase food. The new law makes some minor changes to the program such as preventing lottery winner and certain college student from collecting benefits, shaving costs by $4.5 billion over 10 years.  But it largely leaves the structure of the program intact.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich) said the SNAP funding was necessary to help “families who have fallen on hard times”.

The number of Americans receiving SNAP aid has surged the past five years, in part because of the lingering impact of the recession and also because many states have eased eligibility rules.  The Congressional Budget Office said 45 million people received close to $80 billion of SNAP benefits in 2011, up 70% from 2007.  House lawmakers have voted to cut SNAP spending by an additional $30billion over 10 years, mostly by limiting eligibility and some have called for giving control of the program to the states.

Common Sense Review

Where to begin… First when the majority of the funding in a Farm Bill goes to food stamps, it is not a Farm Bill it is  Food stamp bill. It is ridiculous that lawmakers think the citizens don’t get it. 

Now you have giving 75% of the funding to the Food Stamp program, if there is a weather issue that damages crop, food prices go up.  I am glad the poor are covered while the rest of us pay the increased price. 

Yet the most interesting part of the article is Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow statement regarding the necessity to increase in the SNAP program is to help “Families who have fallen on hard times”… Debbie don’t you mean the hard times that have fallen on the people.  This is followed by the CBO’s note that 45 million people received close to $80 billion of SNAP benefits in 2011, up 70% from 2007. 

Gee, Debbie (the great savior of Michigan) did you vote for the bills that slammed this “Hard Times” on to the people?…