Community Corner
Should Food Stamps be Taken off Table in Farm Bill Debate? Iowa Patch Poll
Farm bill debate is usually a bipartisan love fest between rural states like Iowa that support farm programs and urban states that like the nutrition side of the program. But there's a divorce shaping up and it's contentious.
The U.S. House passed a massively scaled back five-year farm bill, stripped of the food stamp program used by 48 million Americans, nearly half of them children, on a narrow vote last week, CNN reported.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which accounts for about $80 billion per year of about $100 billion in spending under the farm bill each year, is the largest domestic safety net against hunger.
Republicans in the House – save a dozen who defected to vote with Democrats against the farm bill legislation – want deep cuts in nutrition programs that expanded greatly under the Bush and Obama administrations as a stubborn national recession lingered. Democrats say it leaves poor Americans more vulnerable.
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“It is despicable,” North Carolina Democratic Rep G.K. Butterfield said to House Republicans, CNN reported. “What is it about poor people that you don't like?"
The proposed bifurcation is seen as a practical solution, postponing the gnarly partisan debate for a later date and getting a plan in the hands of the nation’s farmers and ranchers. Critics say there’s no guarantee the Republican-controlled House will come back to debate the nutrition side of the program.
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TALK BACK IN THE COMMENTS:
Is it time for food stamps to come out of the farm bill?Or does bifurcation leave poor Americans at the mercy of partisan Congress?
Should farm subsidies – which critics argue are heavily tilted toward corporate agriculture, ethanol producers and fossil fuel producers rather than family farmers – be eliminated altogether?
Should subsidies be tied to soil conservation?
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