Farmers want food stamps. It allows poor people to buy their goods. It is a Farm Subsidy. I don't know why you think it needs to be removed or why you think Food Stamp reform is needed.
Nonsense.
Grab your pens and papers, kids, Smackie's about to give you a lesson.
Farmers generally aren't fans of Food Stamps. Farmers like "Food Stamps" (quotes intentional) because it ensures that they still receive subsidies. How, you might ask? Let Smackie explain...
The Agricultural Adjustment Act passed in 1933 to help avoid another Dust Bowl and was deemed unconstitutional because it over reached on setting growing limits. A revamped AAA was passed in 1938 and kept the constitutional parts and made some other changes. The idea was to keep commodity prices affordable by assuring the growers that the US Government would buy excess product.
In 1949, Congress passed a new revamped law that set prices at certain ultra high levels and guaranteed farmers that if the price of your commodity went below a certain level, the Government would make up the difference.
What's important to note is the purpose of the Farm Bill is to keep either of these from kicking in.
Thus, Congress now passes new farm legislation every 5 years to adjust the farm and dairy plans and in effect suspend the 1938 and 1949 laws. Absent an extension, these laws would kick in and all hell would break loose. The price of milk, for example, would explode. So absent a continuing resolution, a new Farm Bill is passed for a 5 year time frame to be "flexible" to the market.
Seems simple, but Smackie, what does this have to do with Food Stamps? Glad you asked...
The 1964 Food Stamp Act was part of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society plan to end hunger in America. It originally wasn't a nationwide plan. 10 years later it became a nationwide plan, which of course was going to require some funding. Much like the Farm Bill, the SNAP program (the official name for the Food Stamps program) required reauthorization after a certain number of years.
So what does the have to do with the Farm Bill?
In 1977 as Jimmy Carter's Administration was replacing Gerald Ford's, they couldn't get either bill to pass. The Dems thought the time for subsidizing farmers (predominantly in Republican districts) had passed, and Republicans thought that food stamps were too generous (predominantly in Democratic Urban districts), so they merged the two into one bill, now commonly known as the Farm Bill. So every five years both both parties can plug their nose and vote for subsidies for rich farmers or food stamps for poor people.
It's been that way ever since.
And that's why you can't have a conversation about reforming the SNAP program without having a conversation about reforming the farm subsidies.
