Today, from Representative Vicky Hartzler (r), via Twitter:

Rep. Vicky Hartzler ‏@RepHartzler

Honored to receive the Agricultural Leader of the Year award from Agricultural Leadership of Tomorrow. [….] 12:43 PM – 18 Nov 13

And within eleven minutes, two responses:

curtis whitworth ‏@curtiswhitworth

@RepHartzler is this because of the subsidies your received? What a hypocrite. 12:48 PM – 18 Nov 13

carl klopfenstine ‏@Carl23b4

@RepHartzler Got your money I guess but cut SNAP.Hope you feel good. 12:54 PM – 18 Nov 13

“Who needs town halls anymore? That’s so twentieth century,” they said. “Everyone uses social media these days. It’ll be easier. You won’t have to respond to any hard questions…”

Today, via Twitter:

Rep. Vicky Hartzler ‏@RepHartzler

Both the Mizzou Tigers and the KC Chiefs are 3-0! Life is good 3:12 PM – 23 Sep 13

Not so good for others:

House votes to cut food stamps by $39 billion

By Pete Kasperowicz and Erik Wasson – 09/19/13 06:09 PM ET

The House approved legislation Thursday that would cut $39 billion in funds over the next decade for food stamp programs.

Members approved H.R. 3102, the Nutrition Reform and Work Opportunity Act, in a close 217-210 vote. No Democrats voted for the bill, and 15 Republicans voted against GOP leaders….

….The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that up to 3.8 million people would lose food stamp benefits next year….

FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 476

H R 3102      YEA-AND-NAY      19-Sep-2013      6:07 PM

     QUESTION:  On Passage

     BILL TITLE: Nutrition Reform and Work Opportunity Act

—- YEAS    217 —

Hartzler

—- NAYS    210 —

—- NOT VOTING    6 —

But, pretty good for some:

These Republicans Who Voted To Cut Food Stamps Personally Received Large Farm Subsidies

Some Republican members of Congress receive their own share of government money.

posted on September 21, 2013 at 3:05pm EDT

Andrew Kaczynski BuzzFeed Staff

….Another Republican congresswoman who voted to make cuts to the food stamp program was Rep. Vicky Hartzler of Missouri. Her farm received more than $800,000 in Department of Agriculture subsidies from 1995-2012. In 2001, her farm received $135,482 in subsidies….

Hey, but both Mizzou and the Chiefs are 3-0, so life is good.

Today the House of Representatives voted 217-210 to cut $39 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). All the House Democrats and 15 Republicans voted against the cuts. None of the 15 Republicans were from Missouri.

As House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) noted, “Every person who votes for this Republican measure is voting to hurt his or her own constituents.” For a Missouri perspective on Pelosi’s comment consider that 15% of Missouri’s population – about 933,000 people – are expected to receive SNAP benefits in 2014. SNAP funding in Missouri in 2014 is already due to be diminished by $96 million when temporary funding from the  2009 Recovery Act expires on November 1. The bill our Missouri GOPers voted for today will take an additional $40 billion from the entire program over the next 10 years – pushing 4 and 6 million people across the U.S. out of the program. Be assured the new cuts will hit Missouri hard. The U.S. Department of Agriculture ranks Missouri second in the nation in percentage of households with “very low food security.”

SNAP aid is usually included in the farm bill. It was separated out this year so that a bill with hefty agricultural subsidies could be passed without wrangling with the Senate about the SNAP cuts that killed an earlier effort at a Farm Bill. Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-4), a Missouri farmer who manages to pull in plenty of those agricultural handouts, indicated that she was going to vote to cut food aid because:

“This bill helps people get back to work,” Hartzler said. “It also cuts down on the waste, fraud and abuse in the SNAP program.”

You read it right. According to Hartzler – and other GOP bozos who are attempting to put a good face on their votes today – starvation creates jobs.

Sorry, Vicky, no matter what you try to make us believe, we don’t have 7.1% unemployment in Missouri because folks are lazy. There aren’t enough jobs to go around – thanks to the Bush recession that GOP ideologues like Hartzler helped engineer. Actually, given the fact that the minimum wage hovers around $7, there are plenty of working folks whose families won’t eat without SNAP aid.  KOMU in Columbia quoted a man named Jack Bhutod whose situation is all too common:

I’m supporting a family of three on a low wage job and we can’t afford the food we need without food stamps, … “Hunger is not a game for us. We need to eat.

As for fraud, if it were really a problem, then Hartzler’s GOP fellow-traveler, Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD), wouldn’t have had to tell overt lies in order to try to make that case. Food stamp fraud rates are among the lowest of any federal program.

So fraud and lazy lay-abouts aren’t don’t pose real problems.  But no matter – we should give our Missouri GOPers some leeway . Most of them probably don’t really understand too much about hunger since almost all of them have an average net worth well above a million dollars (see also here). Nor do they really have to be too concerned about constituents who are in a daily struggle with hunger. Poor people, after all,  aren’t the folks who pay the campaign bills.  

Rep. George Miller (D-CA) today issued a report identifying fourteen Republican representatives who voted – are you ready – to cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits from the farm bill while retaining massive agricultural subsidies they themselves receive. Collectively, the fourteen GOP piggies:

Have a total net worth of up to $124.5million;

Have received a total of at least $7.2 million in farm subsidies;

Each previously voted to gut the SNAP program by giving states large financial incentives to kick families off SNAP.

A charter member of the GOP’s pork swilling fourteen: Missouri’s Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-4). Her federally-financed take: $516,000; her total worth: somewhere between $2,218,026 and $13,854,995; the number of constituents in her home county, Cass County, who receive SNAP benefits: 8,664 or 9%. According to Rep. Hartzler, the House approved farm bill:

… secures a safe, affordable, and plentiful food supply by improving agricultural programs to be cost-effective and market-oriented.

“This Farm Bill saves taxpayer dollars by eliminating direct subsidies and payments to those who don’t farm,” said Hartzler. “In place of direct payments, farmers will have access to a low-lying safety net that offers assistance only after significant losses are suffered as a result of extreme droughts, floods, or adverse market conditions. This ensures American consumers won’t have to be dependent on foreign countries for our food. A safe, affordable food supply is vital to the national security of this great nation.”

However, as usual, Hartzler’s not telling us the whole story:

Republicans tried to claim that the passage of the farm provisions was done to help family farms, but this Farm Bill is loaded with pork and handouts for the wealthy and corporations. Farmers with incomes over $250,000 will receive one third of the crop insurance money. This Republican House passed windfall for millionaires and corporations comes at a time when net farm income is projected to reach it highest level since 1973.

Hartzler does try to weasel out of taking responsibility for redistributing wealth upwards, claiming that cutting direct subsidies to farmers who take land out of production while providing federally funded insurance subsidies to big agricultural interests constitutes a significant fiscal “reform.” As Lisa Ritland of the Denver Post put it, “While ending one egregious subsidy program, direct payments, a new potentially larger taxpayer giveaway was created.”

It’s clear who benefits here, but who gets hurt?:

… the typical household receiving aid under the farm bill through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), has a gross monthly income of only $744, and their average monthly SNAP benefit-which every member detailed in this report voted against extending- is just $281.

Nor are the recipients the worthless “takers” that make the GOP and their supporters go rabid with self-righteous, tax-payer rage:

House Republicans aren’t starving able bodied poor people. Forty five percent of food stamp recipients are children. Twenty percent of recipients are disabled, and 8.5% are elderly. These aren’t healthy working age adults mooching off the system. They are the most vulnerable members of our society.

So, to recap, Children will go without food while millionaire Vicky Hartzler continues to lives the good life, pulling in the funds that should be supporting our much-vaunted safety net. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired to death of subsidizing the likes of the self-serving Rep. Hartzler.  

The 2013 agriculture bill that was passed in the Senate, and which must now be reconciled with the bill passed by the House, proposes a few modest but welcome cuts to programs subsidizing big agriculture, but it also insures that millions of the poorest Americans will once again struggle with hunger. The Senate bill cuts $4.1 billion dollars from Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) – a.k.a. food stamps – over 10 years; the House is proposing cuts of $20.5 billion over the same period. This means that the actual cuts will be somewhere between these two numbers and anywhere from 500,000 to 2 million people will lose essential food support.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) attempted to restore the cuts in the Senate. If nothing else, doing so would have created more bargaining room for Democrats in the deliberations that will determine the final configuration for SNAP. Her amendment was, however, defeated 76-20, and among the 28 Democrats voting against it was our own Senator Claire McCaskill.

I haven’t found any statement from McCaskill about why she decided to go this route. Undoubtedly, there are lots of times when politicians swallow hard and vote for bills that have bad aspects in order to obtain important benefits for their main constituents, and Agriculture, big and small (but mostly big) is important for Missouri politicians. However, Sherod Brown of Ohio, surely an agricultural state, saw fit to support Gillibrand’s amendment.  Nor would this amendment have endangered the bill; it would have simply given Senate negotiators more room to get a better final bill relative to SNAP out of the reconciliation process.

Any cuts to SNAP will hurt. The New York Times notes that “some 50 million Americans live in households that cannot consistently afford enough food, even with the food-stamps program.” Benefits should arguably be increased, not cut. The Senate was wrong to cut benefits for those who are most helpless while proposing to cut generous agricultural subsidies only for those farmers making more that $750,000 annually – I guess our rich Senators think you’re a hardship case if you only manage to pull in a measly $600,000 a year.

Surely, McCaskill, who was calling herself a  Democrat last I heard, doesn’t buy into the reactionary Republican meme of the “culture of dependency,” which eschews a safety net for ideological reasons:

… There is a supposed moral impetus driving these cuts, a pathological desire to see to it that the “culture of dependency” is snuffed out, as the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” clause remains embedded within dominant political ideology. Republican Rep. Stephen Fincher out of Tennessee recently summed up these exact sentiments when he informed a gathering in Memphis that food stamps essentially “steal from those in the country and give to others in the country.” The culture of dependency is destroying America, so the story goes.

This message, of course, has always been reserved for the poor. This is in fact the scandal and hypocrisy of such a message. It could never be leveled at the wealthy and powerful. If it were, there would be more talk in congressional circles about prosecuting Wall Street. If it were, there would be considerably more action taken in combating tax evasion. If it were, then maybe Rep. Fincher would stop taking millions of dollars in farm subsidies and call for an end to such subsidies.

Perhaps McCaskill is just burnishing her simple-minded, deficit cutting, bipartisan-queen schtick. A “bipartisan” amendment sponsored by McCaskill and Jeff Flake of Arizona proposed to allow “taxpayers to save money via renegotiated rates with insurance companies who are making billions of dollars selling crop insurance.” It essentially mandates that such savings be used to pay down the deficit (a deficit that is shrinking just fine without such intervention, thank you). So it’s clear that McCaskill is sill playing that worn-out tune, although whether or not it figures into her justification for anti-SNAP vote is only conjecture.

If McCaskill does try to justify this vote on economic grounds, she should be reminded that there is actually a solid economic reason to support food stamps. Although Republicans have managed to paint stimulus as a dirty word, the underlying fact is that economic growth is the result of demand, that is, stimulus, and food stamp spending provides just that:

Food stamps also help stimulate the economy more than other forms of government spending … since their recipients are so poor that they tend to spend them immediately. When Moody’s Analytics assessed different forms of stimulus, it found that food stamps were the most effective, increasing economic activity by $1.73 for every dollar spent. Unemployment insurance came in second, at $1.62, whereas most tax cuts yielded a dollar or less.

I look forward to learning just why Claire McCaskill thinks it’s okay to balance the budget on the backs of the most vulnerable. In the meantime, I would like to remind her of the words of Richard Nixon, of all people, quoted in the opening of a New York Times editorial about congress’ shameful efforts to cut nutritional support to poor Americans: “That hunger and malnutrition should persist in a land such as ours is embarrassing and intolerable.” What’s even worse is when our politicians disable governmental mechanisms used to hold the line against hunger and malnutrition.

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the newest name for the federal food stamp program.

From 4th Congressional District Representative Vicky Hartzler’s (r) August 18, 2012 e-mail newsletter:

….Our [House republicans] Farm Bill….

….With the SNAP changes we target waste, fraud, and abuse but we do NOT take one single calorie out of the mouths of children or other needy Americans dependant on this aid….

Senator Claire McCaskill (D) in Kingsville, Missouri in the 4th Congressional District on August 16, 2012:

….Senator McCaskill: ‘Cause you have so many urban, um, members of Congress that don’t understand or realize how important the farm bill is and vice versa. Uh, you’ve got some folks from very rural areas, um, that, that don’t probably appreciate, um, why the food stamp bill is important. I think the better thing to do is us to continue to do what we did in this farm bill, and that was we cut food stamps, we reduced the deficit by twenty-three billion, and still provided that certainty and predictability and crop insurance and shallow loss program that farmers need to keep our food prices stable. Uh, so, you know it’s just a fascinating thing to me that we would have the kind of bipartisan support from Republicans and Democrats in the Senate, and yet the Republicans are blocking this bill in the House and keeping it from coming for a vote….

….I mean, if Speaker [John] Boehner would put the Senate bill on the floor it would pass. Um, and, and, but, he is, um, I think they did that because Speakers want to hold on to their job as Speaker and the Republican caucus elects him. And I think he’s trying to keep the tea party happy, he’s trying to keep Congressman Akin and, and Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler happy by, uh, by not voting on the Senate farm bill….

[emphasis added]

Interesting. Representative Hartzler (r) says the Senate isn’t acting (well, it’s difficult to tell because her newsletter conflates so many things) and Senator McCaskill (D) says the House is obstructing.

Let’s go to March 3, 2009 and Representative Mike Pence (r), Chairman of the House Republican Caucus (on CNN via Think Progress):

[….]

SANCHEZ: Did you hear what Rush Limbaugh said, “the dirty little secret is all Republicans want Barack Obama to fail?” Very direct question to you, Sir. Do you want Barack Obama to fail?

PENCE: Come on, Rick. Nice try. I know what Rush Limbaugh meant. …Everyone like me, Rush Limbaugh and others who believe in limited government, who believes in conservative values, wants the policies that this administration is bringing forward, higher taxes, massive increase in government spending, a huge increase in the role of government, in our daily lives, departure from traditional values. You bet, we want those policies to fail. Because, Rick, we know big government, increases in debt, the micromanagement of the economy out of Washington, DC is a policy that will fail.

[….]

Hmm. No Farm Bill before an election. Do you think we’ll soon see anonymously funded Super PAC ads on our television sets blaming Obama?

Yeah, we’ll bet on the republican teabagger controlled House being the obstructionists.

The 2011 numbers on households (not individuals) in Missouri’s current 4th Congressional District, via the United States Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service:

Characteristics of SNAP Households

Office of Research and Analysis September 2011

Missouri Congressional District 4 [pdf]

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the cornerstone of the Nation’s nutrition assistance safety net. SNAP touches the lives of over one in seven Americans. Benefits are available to most people who meet the financial requirements, and the program serves a broad spectrum of low income people. In Fiscal Year 2010, SNAP provided about $1.4 billion dollars in food benefits to a monthly average of over 901,349 people in Missouri. The program served 83 percent of those eligible for benefits in Missouri in 2008. SNAP also has an economic multiplier effect with every $5 in new SNAP benefits generating as much as $9 in total economic activity.

The American Community Survey provides a snapshot of SNAP participants in 2007-2009 for each Congressional District. More detailed information for the Nation and each State is presented in Characteristics of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Households: Fiscal Year 2010, available at http://www.fns.usda.gov/ora.

[….]

Households Receiving SNAP – 29,210 [11.55%]

Households Not Receiving SNAP – 223,687 [88.45%]

Total – 252,897

[emphasis added]

Individual SNAP recipients in the counties in the new 4th Congressional District, from the U.S. Census:

County SNAP benefits recipients [individuals]

U.S. Census Bureau, Small Area Estimates Branch

10.13.2011

July 2009

Audrain County, MO [partly in district] 3,785

Barton County, MO 2,433

Bates County, MO 2,442

Benton County, MO 3,628

Boone County, MO 19,144

Camden County, MO [partly in district] 5,443

Cass County, MO 9,927

Cedar County, MO 2,898

Cooper County, MO 2,313

Dade County, MO 1,292

Dallas County, MO 3,334

Henry County, MO 3,997

Hickory County, MO 1,599

Howard County, MO 1,304

Johnson County, MO 5,438

Laclede County, MO 7,398

Moniteau County, MO 1,724

Morgan County, MO 3,750

Pettis County, MO 7,249

Pulaski County, MO 5,037

Randolph County, MO 4,706

St. Clair County, MO 2,057

Vernon County, MO 3,563

Webster County, MO [partly in district] 4,996

Yep, Missouri’s 4th Congressional District is mostly rural and it has a significant number of SNAP recipients.

“…Uh, you’ve got some folks from very rural areas, um, that, that don’t probably appreciate, um, why the food stamp bill is important…”

There are a lot who do appreciate why it is important.

“…we do NOT take one single calorie out of the mouths of children…”

Interesting. Would those be empty calories as opposed to balanced nutrition? Just asking. You’d think a former home economics teacher would endeavor to explain the difference.

From the November 28, 2009 New York Times:

Food Stamp Usage Across the Country

County, population, percent receiving food stamps, percent change from ’07 to ’09

Audrain Missouri 26,271 18% +37%

Barton Missouri 12,348 25% +29%

Bates Missouri 17,148 18% +26%

Benton Missouri 18,261 25% +21%

Boone Missouri 156,716 15% +33%

Camden Missouri 40,923 17% +40%

Cass Missouri 99,954 12% +50%

Cedar Missouri 13,597 27% +25%

Cooper Missouri 17,515 16% +39%

Dade Missouri 7,342 21% +25%

Dallas Missouri 16,873 25% +30%

Henry Missouri 22,012 23% +27%

Hickory Missouri 8,988 22% +27%

Howard Missouri 9,969 16% +26%

Johnson Missouri 52,134 14% +41%

Laclede Missouri 35,703 27% +37%

Moniteau Missouri 15,116 15% +35%

Morgan Missouri 20,928 23% +36%

Pettis Missouri 41,266 23% +28%

Pulaski Missouri 44,793 14% +31%

Randolph Missouri 25,811 23% +19%

St. Clair Missouri 9,146 29% +31%

Vernon Missouri 20,030 23% +26%

Webster Missouri 37,073 17% +37%

[emphasis added]

From the same source:

County, population, percent receiving food stamps, percent change from ’07 to ’09

Jackson Missouri 670,843 21% +28%

St. Louis Missouri 990,151 12% +31%

St. Louis City Missouri 353,064 36% +19%

[emphasis added]

There clearly are rural counties in the 4th Congressional District with higher or equivalent rates of SNAP use when compared to urban areas in the state.

There isn’t a practical urban/rural divide when it comes to food stamps, just political ideologues in Congress with other agendas. The reality is there are a lot of hungry people (the largest percentage is children) everywhere in Missouri in need of assistance.

Today Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill joined her Republican colleague in the Missouri delegation and voted against restoring 4.5 million dollars in Food Stamp Aid to the pending farm bill. The amendment, offered by New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, failed 33 to 63.

The farm bill, however, does continue to reward big agribusiness. Although it cuts direct subsidies to farmers, it increases other wasteful payouts:

Even as the bill eliminates the direct payments program, […] it would create a new wasteful subsidy program called “Risk Coverage” that would effectively lock in profits for the largest corn and soy growers — costing taxpayers an estimated $29 billion over the next 10 years.

Just as bad, the bill would continue the “crop insurance program.” In 2011, taxpayers paid over $7 billion for these subsidies — including giant, already profitable operations. Most businesses would give their left leg to get the same kind of deal.

Gillbrand proposed curbing those subsidies to pay for restoring the food stamp funding:

Gillibrand had hoped to prevent food aid cuts in the $969 billion bill by trimming the guaranteed profit for crop insurance companies from 14 to 12 percent and by lowering payments for crop insurers from $1.3 billion to $825 million.

Lest there be any doubt about who profits from this bill as it stands:

Giant agribusinesses like Monsanto and Cargill are pushing hard to pass this bill — they spent over $200 million in lobbying and campaign contributions in 2008 alone.

Now, about the amendment to restore food stamps: True, it affects only a specific segment of those who receive them:

The cuts target the so-called heat-and-eat initiative in which 14 states automatically make families eligible for more food aid if they receive even $1 in help paying their utility bills. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the decrease would amount to about $90 a month for an affected family, representing a quarter of its food budget.

How’d you like to lose 25% of your food budget? Now think how hard that might be when you’re unemployed, disabled or a senior on a fixed income.  Not exactly pleasant, is it?  

Republicans have responded to the rising numbers of families using food stamps by pretending to be worried that it signals not rising poverty, but growing moral turpitude, an “entitlement” mentality. Nevermind that the Bush recession socked it to the American people and that many, many more Americans have had to rely on the social safety net the GOP wishes to decimate. Currently 15% of Americans depend on food stamps. According to the Under Secretary of Agriculture for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services:

“The numbers of people on SNAP reflect the economic challenges people are facing across the country,” Mr. Concannon said. “Folks who have lost their jobs or are getting fewer hours. These people haven’t been invented.”

Robert Reich asserts that “regressive Republicans pretend they’re about opportunity. In reality they’re back at what they’ve been doing for years – promoting Social Darwinism.” He is, of course, right to a certain extent. The problem, however, lies in the fact that while it may be Social Darwinism for me and thee, it’s helping hands all around for corporations,  big agribusiness, the Montsantos, and Cargills – all the folks with the wide open pocket books.

Despite all the big talk about entitlement societies, in the end it all boils down to whose interests the pols are going to stand up for. I thought I knew who Democrats went to bat for – which is why it’s so painful to see Claire McCaskill cross the partisan aisle on this one. It’s a sorry situation when even Massachusetts’ GOP Senator Scott Brown, who voted for the amendment, manages to position himself to the left of Missouri’s Democratic senator.

AFTERTHOUGHT:  McCaskill has tried to shrug off the Rasmussen poll that shows her running far behind Sarah Steelman – and she’s right to do so, as a subsequent, much closer PPP poll showed. So, my question abut her vote against food stamps: Is she this scared of Steelman? My advice, for what it’s worth: Running scared is always stupid.