Agricultural News
EWG Says Lawmakers Representing Most of the Hungriest Counties Voted to Cut SNAP
Fri, 20 Sep 2013 14:15:55 CDT
Mary Ellen Kustin, legislative and policy analyst for the Environmental Working Group, published the following editorial on her organization's website:
If you live in one of America's 100 hungriest counties, there is a one-in-three chance that you rely on food stamps.
There is also a pretty good chance that your member of Congress just voted to kick you off food stamps.
And, if you live in Haywood County, Tennessee, or Shannon County, South Dakota, you can be sure your representative not only voted to kick you off food stamps but also voted to give him- or herself more farm subsidies.
Sadly, two-thirds of the 39 legislators who represent America's 100 hungriest counties voted yesterday to cut funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, by $40 billion over the next ten years.
What's more, the same legislators voted last month to increase unlimited subsidies for the largest farm businesses at a time of record farm income.
Two of the members with the hungriest counties in their districts not only voted to increase farm subsidies for their wealthy neighbors. They also voted to increase subsidies for themselves.
As EWG has reported, at least 15 members of Congress or their spouses received a total of $237,921 in farm subsidies in 2012. Ten of the 11 representatives who personally received farm subsidies voted yesterday (Sept. 19) to cut food stamps after voting to extend farm subsidies earlier this summer.
Rep. Noem, for instance, received $1,400 in direct payments in 2012. The total amount in farm subsidies she has collected since 1995 is estimated to be more than $503,700. Noem represents nine of the hungriest counties and voted to drastically cut food stamps. But when given the chance to save billions in the farm bill earlier this summer, she voted against efforts to reform crop insurance subsidies and to continue tens of billions of dollars in other farm subsidies.
But only one member had the audacity to quote the bible to justify cuts to anti-hunger programs: Rep. Fincher. Fincher represents Haywood County, Tennessee, where 32 percent of the residents rely on SNAP to feed their families. Fincher "gets by" on more than his Congressional salary of $172,000 - he and his wife banked more than $3.6 million in farm subsidies between 1995 and 2012.
Fincher is not the only "farmer" in Haywood County collecting farm subsidies. Landowners in Haywood County collected more than $3.8 billion a year in farm subsidies over the past decade.
If Fincher, Noem and their colleagues are truly interested saving money in the federal budget, they should start by reforming the farm bill - where it could do more good. Instead of gutting SNAP, which generates $1.73 throughout the economy for every $1 spent on food stamps, Congress should save billions of taxpayer dollars by imposing common-sense means testing and payment limits on crop insurance subsidies.
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