Senate defeats proposal to trim food stamp program

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate on Tuesday began plowing through 73 amendments to a $500 billion bill that will set farm policy and fund the food stamp program over the next five years. One of its first votes was to reject a proposal to trim food stamp spending.

The farm bill, one of the last major pieces of legislation that could clear Congress before the election, carries out major changes to the federal safety net for farmers, replacing their direct payments, even when they don’t plant crops, with greater emphasis on crop insurance and a new program to protect farmers from revenue losses.

The Senate is expected to vote on all the amendments and pass the bill by the end of the week. It then goes to the House, where it could run into resistance from fiscal conservatives.

An early amendment in the Senate dealt with the price of the food stamp program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which now totals $80 billion a year, about 80 percent of the bill’s spending. Food stamp rolls have doubled over the last eight years to 46 million people, driven by the recession.

The Democratic-led Senate defeated 56-43 a proposal by Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., that would have restored strict asset tests for food stamp eligibility. Households with gross incomes less than 130 percent of the poverty level and liquid assets below $2,000, or $3,250 for households with elderly or disabled people, qualify for food stamps. But Sessions says the asset test is widely ignored by states that allow the asset limit to be exceeded if a person receives other welfare benefits. He said his amendment would have saved taxpayers $11 billion over 10 years.

A second Sessions amendment, to prevent states from getting bonuses for increasing registration of food stamp recipients, was also defeated.

The base bill does save $4.5 billion over 10 years by ending another practice by some 15 states of giving low-income people as little as $1 dollar a year in home heating assistance, even when they don’t have heating bills, in order to make them eligible for increased food stamp benefits.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., sought to rescind those savings, saying the reduction would result in half-a-million households losing an average $90 in monthly food benefits, but her amendment went down 66-33. Senate Agriculture Committee chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., said the heating assistance loophole was “undermining the integrity of the program.”

Sessions had proposed another amendment that would have gone further in cracking down on the heating assistance practice, but it was among more than 200 that were not allowed in a deal on proceeding with the legislation reached by the two parties Monday.

Among the amendments that will be considered are those dealing with putting caps on crop insurance subsidies, and proposals dealing with the sugar growers’ protection program, maple syrup, catfish and aerial surveillance of farmland.

Also on the agenda were several amendments having nothing to do with farm policy, including a measure to cut off public funds for political party conventions and another demanding a report on the effects of automatic cuts in defense and other federal spending to take place next January.

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spelchek 11 months ago

"When the food stamp program began in the 1970s, it was designed to help about 1 of 50 Americans who were in severe financial distress. But thanks to eligibility changes first by President George W. Bush as part of the 2002 farm bill and then by President Obama in the 2008 stimulus, food stamps are becoming the latest middle-class entitlement. A record 44.7 million people received food stamps in fiscal 2011, up from 28.2 million as recently as 2008. The cost has more than doubled in that same period, to $78 billion, and is on track to account for 78% of farm bill spending over the next decade. One in seven Americans now qualifies." -- No more pride or shame. What a pity.

dokeus6 11 months ago

Thanks to W's running of our country that is why the number went up.

You made the correlation yourself by this statement "But thanks to eligibility changes first by President George W. Bush as part of the 2002 farm bill and then by President Obama in the 2008 stimulus, food stamps are becoming the latest middle-class entitlement."

Who are you to wave YOUR finger?

GrumpyGus 11 months ago

I am a taxpayer who is not on the dole...that is why I am entitled to wave MY finger. You are going to have to get off your whipping boy Bush. By all accounts he grew government entitlements like any other Democrat and "moderate" Republican. You should be in love with his big spending ways, yet you bash him unending. Well if he should be vilified for his big spending, then Obama should be really blasted. He has raised deficit spending to a high art form.

Sequoia 11 months ago

I don't get this idea that spending itself is bad. No business, family or individual would ever say that spending, in and of itself, is a bad thing.

The question is value. How much value do we get for what we spend?

I think the point about Bush is that a lot of his spending, particularly the Iraq War, didn't produce anything of value.

In the old days, conservatives didn't argue with deficit spending just because it was deficit spending. Conservatives wanted to make sure we'd really be getting a good value for the dollar. Conservatives wanted to make sure that the liberals' plans would really work. Now, conservatives just use "spending" as a partisan bat to beat people over the head with.

I continue to be amazed at the disconnect between the Republican's argument that the federal government was competent enough to "transform the Middle East" with military intervention, and the current Republican argument that the federal government is not competent enough to address domestic problems. Conservatives should support institutions, like families, that make America strong. Sometimes that calls for spending to preserve those institutions.

We need to get back to the idea of "value." Seems like a word nobody uses anymore. Conservatives should be trying to conserve valuable things, like families. Even if you're not "on the dole" (you still recieve the benefit of many government services), you still benefit from families that are not desperate and panicked.

I don't believe the government can ever "cure" poverty, and it shouldn't try. The poor will always be with us. But, we can alleviate some of the desperation assoicated with poverty, and that's a good thing for me, so that my neighbors don't do something crazy that might hurt me.

tonto_goldberg 11 months ago

Sequoia12 minutes ago - "I don't get this idea that spending itself is bad."

Think about it. You know the answer. It's simplistic. It fits on a bumper sticker, or one of those "hand painted" placards the Americans for Prosperity people hand out for Tea Party rallies.

dokeus6 11 months ago

I am going to be on anyone who spends Billions of taxpayers dollars on a war that we had no business being in.

Government will never change because of the money that is flowing into both campaigns from corporations and banks and the powerful but silent men who control from behind the scenes.