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.
