Food stamp bill in House
The House is working through a version of a “farm bill” — which looks like a food stamp bill with a smattering of farm spending.
House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) and ranking Democrat Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) have been hammered by liberals in the House for daring to cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) by $16.1 billion. This isn’t even a true cut. It’s a cut to projected spending levels for a program that has become the fourth-largest entitlement program on the books.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) noted that the food stamp program makes up 80 percent of the farm bill spending for next year. Food stamps will cost about $770 billion over the next decade without reform. If the program were returned to an inflation-adjusted pre-recession level, the taxpayers would save $340 billion over the next 10 years — far more that the pittance that the House is offering to cut.
Yet, even the small cut to projected increases in food-stamp spending shows that the rent-seeking left will defend to the political death any cuts to the ballooning welfare state.
Brian Darling is Senior Fellow for Government Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
