The Snowe/Collins let them eat cake solution to pay for Medicaid assistance and teacher funding to the states isn't sitting well with House Dems. As a reminder, Snowe and Collins refused to allow the funding to go foward unless the Senate found other offsets to pay for it (incidentally, they are not demanding a similar offset for continuing tax cuts to the rich, go figure).
The Senate took a page from a White House suggestion that the food stamp program be cut for a jobs bill, and offset this aid by cutting $6.7 billion from the food stamp program, ending the boost the program got in the recovery act early, cutting off the bump in funding in 2014. House liberals, back in a quick session this week to pass the critical aid bill, vow to restore the funding in a future bill.
“This is a bitter pill to swallow," Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said in a statement to The Hill. "I fought very hard for the food assistance money in the Recovery Act and the fact is that participation in the food stamps program has jumped dramatically with the economic crisis, from 31.1 million persons to 38.2 million just in one year.....
DeLauro oversees annual spending on the food stamps program as chairwoman of the House Appropriations subcommittee for Agriculture. Asked if she would try to restore the food stamps money in future legislation, DeLauro said, "Yes, absolutely, I will be fighting for these funds."
Members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus have similar concerns.
"But the good news is that there is time to fix it," said Michael Mershon, a spokesman for Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.). "And he is considering legislation to restore the cuts while finding another offset."
House Democratic leaders had resisted earlier suggestions by the Obama administration to redirect food stamp money to the jobs bill. The White House had noted that the 13.6 percent stimulus increase in food stamps was initially designed to last until 2014. It was going to last until 2018 because of unexpectedly low food prices during the recession.
"Their line of argument was, well, the cost of food relative to what we thought it would be has come down, so people on food stamps are getting a pretty good deal in comparison to what we thought they were going to get," said House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) said in a Fiscal Times interview last month.
"Well isn’t that nice," Obey said. "Some poor bastard is going to get a break for a change."
The poor bastards will at least have teachers in their kids' classrooms and a fireman or cop show up at their door in an emergency, even if they might not have enough to adequately feed those kids in a few years. Restoring that food assistance funding is going to be a major challenge for these House Dems, particularly if the Republicans and ConservaDems get their way and extend those tax cuts for the rich.