Senate Defeats Proposal To Trim Food Stamp Program

Senate Defeats Proposal To Trim Food Stamp Program

WASHINGTON -- The Senate on Tuesday began plowing through 73 amendments to a $500-billion bill that will set farm policy and fund the food stamp program over the next five years. One of its first votes was to reject a proposal to trim food stamp spending.

The farm bill, one of the last major pieces of legislation that could clear Congress before the election, carries out major changes to the federal safety net for farmers, replacing their direct payments, even when they don't plant crops, with greater emphasis on crop insurance and a new program to protect farmers from revenue losses.

The Senate is expected to vote on all the amendments and pass the bill by the end of the week. It then goes to the House, where it could run into resistance from fiscal conservatives.

An early amendment in the Senate dealt with the price of the food stamp program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which now totals $80 billion a year, about 80 percent of the bill's spending. Food stamp rolls have doubled over the last eight years to 46 million people, driven by the recession.

The Democratic-led Senate defeated 56-43 a proposal by Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., that would have restored strict asset tests for food stamp eligibility.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/1 ... f=politics

Wellllll, it looks like the Senate fought back another knuckle-dragger assault by the GOP racist to cut funding for nutrition programs. Now it can go back to the House to upset the teabaggers.

There's 80 billion we could save right there!

Yes... Isn't it great that instead of cutting $80 billion from a food program, in order to give more tax breaks to the [phony] "job-creators", they sent the knuckle-dragger back to his office...

The Democratic-led Senate defeated 56-43 a proposal by Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., that would have restored strict asset tests for food stamp eligibility.

Good! Now that poor 21 year old, million dollar lottery winner in Indiana can get her food stamps going again. What did she say? "Well, like... I have two houses and I'm unemployed, so I figured it was still ok to get food stamps, even though I'm a millionaire." And those hipster college students in Baltimore can still go to Whole Foods for Salmon and Sushi on Food stamps! Whoopee! You can't make this stuff up!

Yeah, it's more important to make sure NO ONE gets any assistance rather than let one scammer get through. That's really important to the sociopaths.

But, Isn't it great that instead of cutting $80 billion from a food program, in order to give more tax breaks to the [phony] "job-creators", they sent the knuckle-dragger back to his office...

Oh... and the obligatory:

Just wait till after November 6 LJ....

We will take care of those freeloaders then!

America where the farm bill covers food stamps and obesity is a bigger problem than starvation.

One of your favorites, huh... "Obesity" versus "nutrition", when you have idiots on the right talking about how you can take rice/beans/macaroni and other low-nutrition high-fat/high-carb foods and use them to stretch the food dollar.

Gee, you sound almost as intelligent as Boehner criticizing Obama for "derailing the DREAM Act", when it was Boehner who derailed it in April, 2010. (Got to kill ANYTHING Obama was for, even if it was proposed by the paleo-cons themselves.)