Members of the House are traveling back to Washington today so that they can vote on the $26 billion aid bill to the states that the Senate passed last week. Annie Lowrey at the Washington Independent tells us, however, that some members, led by Rep. Rose DeLauro of Connecticut, are upset about the source of offset funding -- rolling back the food-stamp expansion called for in the stimulus bill.
As Lowrey notes, the problem is that pushing through a different bill from what the Senate has already passed would require the Senate to rush back from recess.
But however it happens -- either now or later -- the Senate should reinstate the food-stamp funding. It's good for families who, as it is, have to rely on a very small amount of money at the same time we're trying to encourage all Americans to make healthier food choices. It's also good for the economy, since food-stamp money gets spent surely and quickly.
Undoing the food-stamp cut would also have a ripple effect on other bills, including the Child Nutrition Act the Senate passed last week. The House still has to pass it's version of the bill, which, among other changes, would increase the funding schools get for lunch, after-school, and breakfast food programs and make it easier for students to enroll in the free-lunch program. As I noted last week, about $2 billion of the cost of that $4.5 billion bill would come from food-stamp offsets.
Responding to my post, Matthew Yglesias said it was disheartening to know that funding for the bill originally came from trimming farm subsidies, but that prospect died in committee. But it wasn't just the bad farm subsidies liberals who care about food policy have come to hate. The biggest chunk would have come from the Environmental Quality Incentives Program. While far from perfect, the EQIP conservation program was a drop in the bucket compared to corn and wheat subsidies, and increasing its funding and improving it could have made it even better. As laudable a goal as improving nutrition in schools and increasing food access for lower-income children is, it's clear that, overall, lawmakers are going to pit progressive food-policy goals against each other, rather than advancing a wholly better system.
-- Monica Potts
