Relationship of farm programs and foodstamps--Updated

Update: Senator Chambliss ensured that the Budget Resolution contained language permitting the Senate Ag Committee to cut across the board, food stamps and/or farm programs.--4/2/05

From 2/7/05:
NewDonkey.com discusses the possibility that the proposed change in payment limitation will result in a lowering of food stamp money.

"Sunday, February 06, 2005

Farm Subsidies and Food Stamps

The Bush budget will apparently include a 'cap' on the maximum values of farm subsidies that any one producer can harvest, an idea that will (rightly) get some progressive support. But the proposal will run directly into already-announced opposition in Congress, especially from Senate Appropriations Chairman Thad Cochran of MS, who is mobilizing the powerful farm lobby to defeat it.

And that's where food stamps come in: Congress organizes its budget and appropriations work by federal department, and by a department-oriented system of budget 'functions' that track the jurisdiction of congressional appropriations subcommittees. If the White House and the GOP congressional leadership can succeed in setting lower targets for USDA spending, then farm subsidies will be placed into a direct competition with food stamps for funding."

Comments:

The setup is the result of the need to get urban votes for farm programs, and vice versa. In a logical world, foodstamps wouldn't be in USDA any longer (they first started in the late 30's to get rid of surpluses, were killed during the war, then George McGovern (I'm pretty sure) pushed them in the late 50 and they got adopted more or less as a pilot project under Kennedy. They kept being expanded over the years as the farm bloc grew less powerful and needed urban votes more and more in order to pass farm programs. (The biggest deal was to make food stamps = money, instead of limiting them to surplus commodities.)

I think it's true that payment limitations, at least in their current form, were the result of Senator Schumer, then Congressman Schumer's work when he was on the House Ag committee. Again, the cotton and rice people in particular didn't like it, but it was his price for supporting the 1985 farm bill. (Whether or not he knew that cotton and rice interests had inserted a couple provisions that would water down the payment limitation provisions, like the entity rule, I don't know. )

Because I like to think well of people, I'd guess Bush and Bolten wouldn't mind a cut of food stamps but are simply operating within a historical structure.