Iowa's GOP congressmen should explain their support of misguided farm bill King, Blum and Young wrongly supported legislation that would have cut food assistance to poor Iowans

The Register's editorial | The Des Moines Register

Show Caption Hide Caption Former Ag. Secretaries talk nutrition, SNAP restrictions at hunger summit Former U.S. Secretaries of Agriculture discuss if food restriction, nutritional education or a combination of the two are needed for people on the SNAP program during the World Food Prize's Iowa Hunger Summit in Des Moines.

The first farm bill, crafted in the 1930s, was aimed at helping Americans cope with the Great Depression. It sought to aid farmers by boosting crop prices and eventually established food assistance for low-income people.

The idea for the first food stamp program is generally credited to Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace, an Iowan who later became vice president, and the program’s first administrator, Milo Perkins, who described the goal as “a picture of a gorge, with farm surpluses on one cliff and undernourished city folks with outstretched hands on the other. We set out to find a practical way to build a bridge across that chasm.”

If only more Washington leaders today were interested in building bridges.

The U.S. House of Representatives cannot manage to renew the farm bill, the country’s most important agriculture and food assistance legislation, without turning it into a game of partisan politics.

GOP leaders crafted renewal legislation that, if implemented, would burden state governments, increase administrative spending, impose new mandates on private food producers and strip low-income Americans of subsidies to buy groceries.

It was rejected in the House 198 to 213 last week, but not because it was such a bad bill. Republicans could not garner support from the party's most conservative members, who demanded a vote on a measure to toughen immigration enforcement.

What does that have to do with farming and food assistance? Not much.

What does the bill's failure reveal about the level of dysfunction in Washington? Everything.

Interestingly, Iowa’s Republican delegation was not among the dissenters. Reps. David Young, Steve King and Rod Blum all voted "yes" to the bill, which is just as troubling.

Iowans should ask the congressmen to explain their rationale for supporting legislation that would have led to ending assistance for millions of Americans who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps).

It is as though our delegation did not read the report about this bill from the Congressional Budget Office. The nonpartisan entity estimated a proposed change in the gross income threshold for SNAP would result in about 400,000 households losing eligibility in an average year. About 265,000 children would lose access to free meals at school.

Do the members of Congress representing Iowans not understand the importance of food assistance for their low-income constituents? Do they not understand how helping people buy groceries affects the state’s economy and farmers?

In fiscal year 2017, an average of 375,513 Iowans received SNAP benefits every month, a 5.7 percent decrease from the previous year, according to the Iowa Department of Human Services. More than half of recipients are children or seniors. Individuals receive $3.58 per day to spend on food, which generates double that amount in economic activity.

The GOP could not get organized to support a bill that would have hurt poor people because too many members were more concerned with hurting immigrants — and ultimately employers, including farmers, who rely on these workers.

Now the country will wait for the Senate to agree on a farm bill, which will need bipartisan support to pass. Yet Iowans are left wondering what exactly we are paying Blum, King and Young to do in Washington.