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Stabenow: House food stamp bill way off base; Vilsack: States should be accountable for work and training

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., said that the House bill to cut $39 billion from food stamps over 10 years is far off from what the Senate will do, while Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack warned that decoupling farm programs from nutrition programs would mean that Congress would not help farmers in the future and that the states should be held accountable for getting food stamp beneficiaries into training programs.

In a speech to the United Fresh Produce Association, Stabenow said “The nutrition title[in the House bill] is so far off that it is not even close to what we would accept in the Senate.” The Senate bill cuts $4 billion over 10 years.

Stabenow said she wants “to do everything to make sure nutrition is accountable” but “we will find savings without playing with people’s lives.”

About 85 percent of the people who get food stamps are seniors, children, members of families with children and people with disabilities including veterans. Of the other 15 percent who are out of work Stabenow said, “we want them working but at the same time we want to make sure there is temporary food help.”

“I happen to think that is a good value in America, not a negative one,” Stabenow said. She noted that in Michigan, people who have worked all their lives are “mortified they need help,” but have had to ask for assistance because there is a high unemployment rate.

The House bill reauthorizes the nutrition programs for three years and the farm program for five years, which if kept in the House-Senate conference report, could set the programs on a permanent path of separation.

Responding to a question from a United Fresh member, Vilsack said that decoupling the farm program from nutrition programs would mean that the House would not pass a farm program.

Vilsack noted that between 200,000 and 300,000 farmers — about one-tenth of 1 percent — produce “the vast majority of what we consume” and that only 33,000 farm operations — about one-tenth of one-tenth of 1 percent—produce half the food in the United States.

The farm program and food stamps were put together in one bill, Vilsack noted, in order to provide food for the hungry, increase consumption of food, stabilize farm income, create economic activity and provide a reason for urban members of Congress to vote for the farm bill.

Noting that the House has put the two programs back into the bill it sent to the Senate Monday, Vilsack said that separating the two “is very bad policy for farmers, in my view.”

If farm lobbyists and rural members of the House say to their urban colleagues they want help for this small number of people with crop insurance and other programs, urban members will ask what’s it in it for them and their constituents, Vilsack said. But when you add food stamps, “Now the congressman says your folks get something, my folks get something.”

If the two are not in the same bill, Vilsack added, “There will always be support for nutrition programs. Good luck on the farm programs.”

Vilsack said that by ending categorical eligibility, the system that qualifies people more easily for the program, the House would take 1 million to 2 million people off food stamps, while the requirement that people work to get benefits would take another 1 million to 2 million people off.

Vilsack noted that it is the states that have exercised their rights to ask for waivers to the work requirement when unemployment rates are high.

“I won’t say there aren’t ways to save SNAP money, to make it efficient,” Vilsack said, referring to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps.

He noted that the federal government gives the states $320 million per year to link people on food stamps to jobs, and suggested that government should “expect” a better performance from the states in that program. It could be used, he noted, to help find a job for the California surfer who has become nationally famous for getting food stamps while he tries to establish his rock band.

Vilsack also said that House Republicans want farmers to think of entitlements in terms of food stamp beneficiaries rather than Social Security beneficiaries, even though spending on Social Security and Medicare is much higher.