It’s that time again. The time when lawmakers have to reauthorize the behemoth farm bill and Republicans try to flex their muscle and prove how much they want to cut government spending. They’re not looking at subsidies to corporate farms in those cuts, not by any means. No, they are as usual planning to go after the people who are so exhausted from having to scrabble together child care and transportation to get to their multiple jobs that they don’t have the time or energy to fight back. Yes, it’s food stamp cutting time for the GOP.
There’s even more pressure on the House GOP now, when they forced a stupid balanced budget rule on themselves first thing, took the debt ceiling hostage, then said Social Security and Medicare cuts were off the table. Along with tax increases, of course. So the gang that made their very first policy vote about helping rich people cheat on their taxes—and increase the deficit by $114 billion over the next decade—wants to make kids go hungry. This, by the way, is also the gang that’s been screaming about egg prices for the last month.
They are kicking around “significant changes to the nation’s food stamps program, including benefit cuts and stricter work requirements, as some in the new majority scramble for ways to slash government spending this year.” The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provided about $119 billion in food assistance last year. By way of comparison, the National Defense Authorization for this fiscal year is $857.9 billion. But they’ve got a lot of unidentified aerial objects to shoot down, so …
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What the Republicans want to do, along with cuts, is of course work requirements, which should actually be more work requirements because SNAP already has them. If you are 18-49 and are physically able to work, you have to be working in some capacity in order to get the assistance, unless you’re taking care of a child or are a caregiver to someone else in your home. Last time around, in 2018, the GOP wanted to even put older people to work in order to be able to eat.
This is farm bill whack-a-mole. Every time the legislation needs to be reauthorized we have this fight. Every time the policy people point out that more hoops to jump through to get help doesn’t help low-income people find better jobs and “dignity.” It would hurt working people and it would hurt veterans.
This comes in a period of high inflation for food prices, and when millions of people are already facing a “hunger cliff” because the emergency funding that was passed in 2020 for pandemic relief is expiring. Some states have already ended the enhanced assistance, but more than half the states have continued it, and the cuts are real and are going to be painful.
Ellen Vollinger, SNAP Director for the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), said that the expected cut to benefits will be about $82 a month, and that older Americans will experience the deepest cuts. “FRAC estimates that they will see their allotments fall from US$281 to pre-pandemic levels, just US$23 per month.” A family of four could have their benefit cut by about $328 every month.
The push in the House is coming from the maniacs who are controlling Barely Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s strings, “a group of five conservatives led by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).” It includes Reps. Andy Biggs and Lauren Boebert. They say that “untenable” debt levels require “work requirements as a feature of welfare reform,” specifically “structural reforms of SNAP,” which also would restore “dignity” for beneficiaries. “Breaking this poverty trap will help future generations avoid welfare programs altogether.”
The guy who has to negotiation the farm bill, Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson, seems more interested other issues, saying he would focus on “tackling rising inflation and input costs, energy costs, addressing the politicization of science, and keeping a watchful eye on excessive regulations and spending from this administration.”
So, yeah, trying to make producing the nation’s food more sustainable in climate change is going to be right out. Thompson is not talking so much about making people go hungry because usually the people who are responsible for getting this humongous legislative package out the door aren’t. They don’t want that fight messing up their ability to help out corporate agriculture.
But an inordinate amount of time and energy and angst is going to have to be spent again by all of the groups united behind the principle that people in the richest nation in the world should not be hungry.
President Biden's State of the Union was a masterclass in politics. The Republican Party, like a headless hydra, is unable to find a meaningful policy to get behind. Markos and Kerry talk about the highlights of last week and the enjoyment of watching Senate and House conservatives snipe at one another.
