Senate committee slashes food aid, again

[ProSense]

Senate committee slashes food aid, again

by Joan McCarter

The Senate Agriculture Committee completed work on the 2013 Farm Bill Tuesday, and took another big and totally unnecessary whack at food aid, again. They voted to cut the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps, by $4.1 billion.

That's nothing compared to what the House has in mind: $21 billion in cuts to SNAP. But it's still too much and it's still unnecessary and wrong-headed. CBPP estimates that cuts as large as what the House is calling for would eliminate food aid to two million people, many families with children and the elderly. What the Senate Democrats should be doing to counter the House is to propose increases to food aid.

It's particularly ironic that the Ag committee would vote for these deeper food aid cuts on the very day that the CBO released a new report estimating that the deficit for this year will $200 billion below the estimate that it produced in February 2013. If a moral and ethical argument for maintaining food assistance at at least current levels won't work to convince Senate Democrats to restore funding, maybe the CBO will.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/05/14/1209093/-Senate-committee-slashes-food-aid-nbsp-again

The Senate Agriculture Committee on Tuesday approved a five-year farm bill on a 15-5 vote.

Four Republicans voted against the bill — Sens. Pat Roberts (Kan.), Mitch McConnell (Ky.), Mike Johanns (Neb.), and John Thune (S.D.). Liberal Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) also voted "no."

http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/agriculture/299555-senate-begins-markup-of-955-billion-farm-bill

Committee membership: http://www.ag.senate.gov/about

[gateley]

1. Pardon me? Couldn't hear you over the growling of my stomach.

Shameful.

[ProSense]

3. Benghazi! n/t

[closeupready]

2. Thank you, Sen. Gillibrand, for voting no on this disgraceful and

outrageous piece of shit bill.

[Laelth]

4. k&r for exposure. This is very important (and quite evil). n/t

-Laelth

[ProSense]

6. It could get worse

Senate Committee Approves $4B In Food Aid Cuts As House Preps Even Worse Measure

The average value of federal food aid will fall to $1.40 per person per meal in November, as a Recovery Act provision expires, but Republicans are already working to impose a further $21 billion in cuts to the program. That’s the upshot of two recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports on the future of the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP).

- more -

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/05/14/2010531/senate-committee-approves-4b-in-food-aid-cuts-as-house-preps-even-worse-measure/

[Hekate]

5. KnR

What the hell?

[woo me with science]

7. Certainly we can count on Obama to veto this....

Right?

And I am SURE that if and when he signs it, you will be right here posting again to draw the same attention to it....won't you, ProSense.



We are played like fools. We are bought and sold.

[ProSense]

8. Is this

Certainly we can count on Obama to veto this....

Right?

And I am SURE that if and when he signs it, you will be right here posting again to draw the same attention to it....won't you, ProSense.

...speculative outrage? The bill just came out of committee. I mean, try calling your members of Congress (especially if he or she is on the committee) regarding this issue.

"We are played like fools. We are bought and sold."

Sounds more like wasting time.

President Obama’s FY2014 Budget Supports Nutrition Programs; Includes Continued ARRA Boost

Washington, D.C. – April 10, 2013 – With nearly one in five Americans saying they struggle to afford enough food for their households, President Barack Obama’s FY2014 budget, released today, protects and proposes to further strengthen federal nutrition programs. He proposes to restore a cut to monthly Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps) benefits made in 2010 and scheduled to take place this November.

“President Obama’s budget recognizes the crucial role the federal nutrition programs play in helping low-income people afford and access healthy food. By proposing to restore the SNAP benefit cuts, and in his budget for nutrition generally, he is assuring that the programs continue their successes in reducing hunger and poverty, boosting health and learning, and providing a base for early childhood developments,” said FRAC President Jim Weill.

“As Congress takes up the Farm Bill, it also must ensure that struggling Americans don’t suffer from mindless deficit reduction. Cutting SNAP benefits and eligibility means less food for low-income people – children, seniors, and working families,” continued Weill. “Fifty million Americans struggle with hunger, and it is time for Members of Congress—a handful from both parties—to stop recycling bad ideas like benefit cuts or structural changes to SNAP. The nation needs to address hunger with the urgency the situation demands. Passing a good Farm Bill that strengthens SNAP is the first step.”

http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5118/p/salsa/web/common/public/content?content_item_KEY=11029

FRAC’s analysis of President Obama’s FY2014 budget
http://frac.org/pdf/fy2014_obama_budget_summary.pdf

In Obama’s Budget, Poverty Initiatives Face an Uphill Battle

by Deborah Weinstein

We’re proud to collaborate with The Nation in sharing insightful journalism related to income inequality in America. The following is an excerpt from The Nation’s “This Week in Poverty” blog.

There are certain facts of life reflected by the FY 2014 Obama budget proposal: first, anything really worth having is going to be hard to get; and, the regrettable corollary — some things you don’t want are a lot closer to reality.

There are new and even historic anti-poverty proposals in this budget. But the better they are, the more they fall into the “hard to get” category. On the other hand, Social Security cuts in the form of smaller cost-of-living adjustments could far more easily become real...President Obama includes thoughtful plans to reduce poverty: targeting job development in the poorest communities; preserving tax credits and food assistance for low-income families; carrying forward health insurance expansions, and promoting the healthy development of children from infancy on...His commitment to improving education for children from birth to five. “Preschool for All” — a $75 billion, 10-year proposal — would ensure that every low- and moderate-income four-year-old has access to a pre-kindergarten education. The money would come from an increase in the tobacco tax. The budget also allocates $1.4 billion next year for Early Head Start and child care partnerships that would increase high-quality early learning programs for infants and toddlers through age three.

The president’s budget attempts a comprehensive approach — using resources from multiple government agencies — to attack both the causes and toxic by-products of poverty. It would create 20 Promise Zones, coordinating housing, education, anti-violence and other economic development initiatives. It would more than triple funds for The Choice Neighborhoods Initiative to improve distressed HUD-assisted housing in very poor communities. It increases Homelessness Assistance Grants by about $350 million, not counting the extra across-the-board cuts now being made. The current sequestration cuts that could end rental housing vouchers for 140,000 low-income families would be reversed.

The president’s $12.5 billion Pathways Back to Work proposal would provide summer and year-round jobs and training for low-income youth and subsidized jobs and training for the long-term unemployed. There are initiatives to improve high schools and to invest in community colleges. The budget would stop cuts in food stamps scheduled to start in November...Obama budget makes the current levels permanent for the Child Tax Credit, Earned Income Tax Credit and the American Opportunity Tax Credit — lifting more than 9 million low-wage workers and their children above the poverty line and creating greater opportunity for low- and middle-income students to attend college.

- more -

http://billmoyers.com/2013/04/14/in-the-obama-budget-poverty-initiatives-face-an-uphill-battle/

E.J. Dionne and Robert Borosage agree: push the President's best initiatives.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022807040

[woo me with science]

9. Silly me.

Commercials don't answer questions!

[ProSense]

10. And

" Commercials don't answer questions!"

...when "propaganda" pushers get smacked in the face with facts, they pretend not to see them.

[woo me with science]

11. Aw, we figured out that rule a long time ago, ProSense.

"when propaganda pushers get smacked in the face with facts, they pretend not to see them."

You've made that amply clear, over and over and over again. You make it clear with Alice in Wonderland diversions, with your brazen, chronic twisting or dismissal of important information, with your repeated, shameless use of blue links that lead nowhere relevant or to articles that actually support the opposite argument. And most recently you made it clear with your inane responses to the lengthy, detailed list I posted of corporate Democratic betrayals under this administration, that had nothing to do with Republican obstruction:

Corporate Democrats pretend, ludicrously, that Republican obstructionism is the main problem.
http://upload.democraticunderground.com/10022786386

Your response to this lengthy list, across multiple threads, was a flat, global dismissal. You used the word, "bullshit"!

Yes, your response to this lengthy catalogue of everything from Obama's signing of NDAA/indefinite detention, to "Kill Lists," to legal assaults on union rights and whistleblower protections for hundreds of thousands of federal employees, to the appointment of corporate shill after corporate shill after corporate shill to the administration, to the cultivation of for-profit prisons across America, to the push for Social Security cuts, to advocacy of the Trans-Pacific assault on American wages and jobs....and on, and on, and on....

All of it. Simply, brazenly, outrageously, surreally DENIED...and on a political discussion board where people actually follow the news.

Indeed, ProSense, in your own words:

"when propaganda pushers get smacked in the face with facts, they pretend not to see them."

You've made that very, very clear. And when I ask you here, now, how you will respond if the President fails to veto these unconscionable cuts backed by his fellow corporate Democrats, of course you avoid the question. Your pattern of posting here makes it crystal clear that you won't answer that question. I guess we'll see, won't we, if your concern about this issue will, true to form, vanish into the memory hole if and when the President is on board with this assault, just as with all the other outrageous assaults on the 99 percent.

[ProSense]

13. Well,

Corporate Democrats pretend, ludicrously, that Republican obstructionism is the main problem.
http://upload.democraticunderground.com/10022786386

...you would post this list of drivel as a rebuttal. You spend your time making excuses for Republicans, deflecting criticism of them onto Democrats.

Go here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022822520

...and reread the bizarre tirade you launched into because the President proposed an increase to the minimum wage.

You've made that very, very clear. And when I ask you here, now, how you will respond if the President fails to veto these unconscionable cuts backed by his fellow corporate Democrats, of course you avoid the question. Your pattern of posting here makes it crystal clear that you won't answer that question. I guess we'll see, won't we, if your concern about this issue will, true to form, vanish into the memory hole if and when the President is on board with this assault, just as with all the other outrageous assaults on the 99 percent.

Now, go here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2844321

...and stop trying posting silly straw men and wasting time with idiotic conspiracy theories. Support something besides outrage. Call your members of Congress.

[woo me with science]

14. "list of drivel" .... "making excuses for Republicans"

"list of drivel" .... "making excuses for Republicans"

See how you make my point? You make an absurd, blanket dismissal of a lengthy list of actual policies and actions by this administration. Appointments, policies, and actions we all witnessed and that we live with every day are denied as "drivel."

None of it exists, because ProSense denies it exists.

We have *always* been at war with Eastasia, and the chocolate ration has been increased.

And for extra chutzpah, you predictably and reflexively squeal about Republicans even here, where the obvious and clearly stated Defining Feature of the list is that these actions were not, for the most part, related to Republican obstructionism at all.

Indeed:

"when propaganda pushers get smacked in the face with facts, they pretend not to see them."

It would be nice if dismissing all these predatory corporate actions and policies as "drivel" had the effect of *actually* turning them into drivel, so that nobody would have to suffer from them.

Instead, we get creepy, blanket denials of this administration's own documented actions and policies, served up with contempt that anyone would dare to suggest any of it happened at all...

[steve2470]

12. pigs fly, McConnell actually voted against this

McConnell must have had some ulterior motive for voting against this Maybe it wasn't a radical enough cut to SNAP for him.