House right wing's focus on food-stamp cuts complicates efforts to pass Farm Bill

A food-stamp fight will complicate efforts to pass a Farm Bill, reports Politico's David Rogers, perhaps the best in the business at explaining the politics of American agriculture and food policy.

To get the bill through the House, Rogers writes, Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) "must go to the right of the Democratic-controlled Senate, which took only $4.5 billion from SNAP," or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which the food-stamp program was dubbed in the 1996 welfare reform bill. "But in trying to show some deft and care, Lucas is meeting stiff resistance in his own committee, where nearly two-thirds of the Republicans are freshmen from the large 2010 class so influenced by the rise of the tea party."

Getting little or no help from House GOP leaders, Lucas has abandoned his hope "to build on the decades-old farmer-food stamp coalition, which has helped sustain support for rural agriculture in the more urban House," Rogers reports. "Instead, the path chosen by the GOP is a political dead-end in the Senate and could become a nightmare for farm and crop-insurance interests trying to fend off tighter income limits on subsidies." The bill would eliminate direct cash payments to farmers but create a larger program for crop insurance.

Food stamps are the largest single part of the bill. The right wing wants to repeal "categorical eligibility," which appears to have allowed states to enroll more people in the program, ballooning its costs. Rogers calls it "an administrative shortcut that’s become far more common since the economic downturn in 2008," putting more people in need of food stamps. The impending House approach "could drive at least 1.8 million people off the rolls and has twice been rejected by the Senate." Lucas and Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., the committee's ranking Democrat, want to raise food-stamp eligibility to 140 percent of the poverty threshold to compensate for repeal of categorical eligibility.

Rogers sums up: "Seldom have the haves and have-nots had so much common stake in one bill. Consider that for a family of three, the distinction between 130 percent of poverty and 140 percent . . . comes down to those earning $24,817 vs. $26,726 a year — about $37 more a week. That’s less than the annual direct cash subsidies for two acres of corn today. And this in the context of a debate where it was considered a major breakthrough for the Senate to trim the rate of crop insurance subsides for producers with adjusted gross incomes in excess of $750,000." (Read more)

Historian and rural advocate sees growing distrust in government, less involvement in civic affairs

The Daily Yonder has excerpted historian and noted rural advocate Helen Lewis's Living Social Justice in Appalachia, just released by University Press of Kentucky. The book includes a smattering of her work -- scholarly, personal, a few essays, a few gardening tips, a recipe or two -- all to give you a flavor of her life in the hills she has loved and fought for. In this excerpt, she argues for rural community development that is only attainable if its economy is morally based.

"In this new phase of capitalist expansion, we find that Appalachia and rural America become like Third World economies and share their problems, high unemployment, lower wages, environmental degradation, community destruction, increasing poverty. Structural adjustment policies imposed on Third World countries took the form in this country of welfare reform, lowering wages and cutting social services in order to compete in the world economy. There has been a decline in democracy, growing distrust in and alienation from government and less participation in civic affairs. In the 1930s when the social contract of the New Deal was being formed, people looked to the government to provide some protection and security from the failures of the economic system. This is now questioned. Public schools and social security are in danger of being privatized. For some, the government is an enemy to be destroyed." (Read more)