The Roll Call blog has just broken news that the GOP House leadership has decided to drop food stamps from the farm bill, in an attempt to get the farm subsidies passed by the House, presumably with Republican votes alone. Nutrition is quite an “appendage” to jettison, by the way: it usually accounts for about 80 percent of all “farm bill” spending. Here’s a great infographic on food stamp usage from the Wall Street Journal online.
I think this development could be very good news: I have long called for splitting the food welfare (or “nutrition”, as it is euphemistically called) portion of the farm bill from the subsidies part. Legislators should be forced to vote on all of these programs on their individual merits, not as part of some logrolling extravaganza. The costs and benefits of programs to feed poor people deserve to be considered separately from farm subsidies, and ideally belong at the state or, even better, local community level anyway. Do we really need the federal government specifying that our kids eat greek yogurt? But I digress.
Read more at http://www.cato.org/blog/breaking-possible-end-agri-nutritional-complex
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