Monday, July 22, 2013

The House can't Decide on an amount for Food Stamp Funding

Divided House Republicans can't agree on a food stamp bill, dimming hopes that a farm bill conference can begin before the August recess. 
House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) warned Friday that no one should expect action anytime soon given fights among House Republicans over how much to cut food stamps.
He said he'd told Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), who leads the Senate Agriculture Committee, of the difficulty. 
“As I told the chairwoman yesterday, we are still in an effort in the House trying to achieve some consensus on a nutrition bill, and that’s not been accomplished yet,” he said. “It’s pretty tough.” 
[...] 
(Rep Steve) King said he is crafting a series of principles, and once they are roughly scored by budget experts, he will present them to the working group. He said that some members want to pick a dollar amount of cuts, but that he prefers to outline policies and have them scored.
“I don’t think we should be picking a number, throw darts at a dart board and pick policies that get us there,” said King, who chairs the Agriculture subcommittee on nutrition. 
The original House farm bill contained $20.5 billion in food stamp cuts, much less than the $135 billion envisioned in the House 2014 budget. 
“Some Republicans want to have much deeper cuts in food stamps, and others say, 'I don’t want to go home to my constituents having voted to cut them deep enough that my political opposition can make a case out of it,'” King said.
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