Rep Jim McGovern, who opposed food stamp cuts in the 2014 farm law, says opponents are not satisfied with narrowing the connection between utility assistance and additional food stamps. “This is not the end of the attack on SNAP,” McGovern said at a Consumer Federation of America conference, referring to the official name for food stamps, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. “They are going to chip away at it, chip away at it.”
House Republicans wanted $40 bln in food stamp cuts over 10 years, chiefly by stricter eligibility rules in the farm bill – the largest cuts in at least a generation. The House-Senate compromise was $8 bln in “heat and eat” savings and pilot programs to help food stamp recipients find jobs.
Consultant Bill O’Conner said Republicans are inflamed because several states have acted to avert the cuts, at least for this year, which would undermine a GOP victory. “They’re very unhappy,” said O’Conner, who took part in a panel discussion before McGovern’s speech. “This is going to be remembered a long time.”
Speaker Boehner has accused states of cheating. House Agriculture chairman Frank Lucas told reporters early this month to expect efforts to re-claim the savings. Texas Rep Mike Conaway, a front-runner to succeed Lucas as Agriculture chairman, said he would launch an examination of food stamps next year.
Large food stamp costs – $76 bln in fiscal 2013, for example – could imperil food stamp’s place in the next farm bill if conservatives remain a large bloc in the House, said O’Conner. While the Senate is likely to draft a bill that yokes farm subsidies and food stamps, “You will not have that in the House at all,” he said.
Mary Kay Thatcher of the American Farm Bureau Federation said the 6 mln-member group believes that if the farm bill is split in two, neither portion would pass. “We believe that marriage works well,” she said, meaning the four-decade partnership of farm groups and antihunger groups to pass farm bills. “I think that coalition, when the time is right, will be back and we can continue to work.”