If you are looking for bipartisanship, you can find it by looking at the Senate’s farm bill, which just passed with broad Republican support. It’s not a great bill by any means, but it’s vastly better than anything being contemplated by the House.
The Senate bill would cut $24 billion from current spending levels, including about $4.1 billion from food stamps over the next 10 years. Groups fighting hunger said the cuts in food stamps would put millions of poor families at risk. A House version of the bill would provide for food stamp cuts of $20 billion, just one major example of how far apart the two houses are in adjusting spending.
In the House, the farm bill faces a much tougher road. Last year, conservative lawmakers helped kill the bill because of their desire for deeper cuts in the food stamp program, which serves about 45 million Americans.
Hoping to satisfy conservatives, the House Agriculture Committee recently increased the amount of cuts to the program to the $20 billion mark over the next 10 years, up from $16 billion in last year’s bill. In a statement before the Senate vote, Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, said the House would begin work on its version of the farm bill this month.
Four billion in food stamp cuts over 10 years is pretty harsh, but the House wants twenty billion in cuts. Last year, the Senate passed a farm bill and the House let it die. I’m not sure what the House will do this year, but their ideologues are not going to make compromise easy, that is for sure.
I am a 55 year-old, physically handicapped, unemployed, caregiver for my 81 year-old, diabetic, nearly blind, physically handicapped mother, and we get a WHOPPING $16 a month for the both of us, from SNAP.
$16 buck a month!
For two people!!!
Yeah, Mom and I are really busting the Federal budget, aren’t we?
That’s not even milk and eggs for a month.
Try living on even $116 a month for two people, Senators and Congressmen.
Just try it for a month! You wouldn’t last a week, on that $29. There’s only so much you can do to/with Ramen Noodles – and tins of sardines, for protein.
Mind you, I’m not complaining, because, well, $16 bucks a month is better than nothing – which, not coincidentally, is the Republican plan. It is, after all, “supplemental.” Except for some, where there’s little or nothing to supplement.
I challenge every Republican and Democratic member of Congress to try to live for a month on what the average family of 4 gets from SNAP, before they vote.
Not one of you feckin’ eedjits would last solo for a month, on what a family of four gets from SNAP!
Let’s see how you like a diet of Ramen, sardines, eggs, and milk.
So, SNAP, MFers!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Damn. That’s really tough. I’m sorry to hear it.
My question is, is passing this new bill better than trying to extend the old one-from 2008–again? If even the ‘good’ version contains billions in cuts to food stamps…
No Republican give s sh*t about the people who need SNAP in their districts and states.
They’re very concerned about Big Agra and Big Military getting enough in their districts and states, to help fund their reelections.
Now, THAT’S important!!!
Well put. You could go farther. They don’t just not give a shit, they are happy to say that people who need SNAP are the biggest problem we face. Their solution is to make your life worse.
Yeah, but my question is, why are Democrats pushing for this?
From Steve Benen:
So why did Democrats support this bill? A few reasons, actually. First, they saw it as far better than the House version. Second, this year’s Farm Bill maintains support for a variety of agricultural industries that exist in every part of the country, including a dairy market stabilization program that Dems like. And third, they saw these cuts as fairly modest and the price of getting a bipartisan bill that stood a chance of passing.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/06/11/18900696-why-the-farm-bill-matters
Only one of those things is an actively good thing; do Dems think that the stabilization program is worth the food stamp cuts?
The Dems that take money from Monsanto and the big dairies do.
If it has not passed the House, it is not passed. The fact that it comes out the Senate with those cuts and that some Democrats voted for those cuts is not a flicker of function. That ship is dead in the water. Until the Democratic majority decides to deal with the filibuster.
How does dealing with the filibuster help bills pass the House?
Because they don’t have to write horseshit bills to get something out. With no filibuster they can pass bills at 51 and then the conservadems don’t even have to matter, much less the vanishing number of rarely available republicans.
If we had no farm bill last year, maybe we don’t need one.