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.

Beard: The American slang term originally referred to anyone who acted on behalf of another, in any transaction, to conceal a person’s true identity. (Wikipedia)

In this case, the beard is, as the title states, Vicky Hartzler, and the identity she’s trying to conceal is that of the political party responsible for the failure to pass a farm bill filled with much needed disaster assistance for drought-devastated farmers. Miss Vicky was chosen to give the weekly Republican address (video at The Turner Report). Since her family runs a big farm in Missouri, the GOPers were probably sure that she would be a natural choice to help them wipe the egg that was the farm bill fail off their collective faces. Here’s what Miss Vicky had to say about the hard time ahead for our farmers:

Like you, I was relieved earlier this month when the House passed a bipartisan measure helping farmers devastated by the ongoing drought.  A lot was riding on this bill, but the Senate, a body controlled by the president’s party, left Washington for the month of August without even bringing it to a vote.   The president has seen fit to politicize this issue, but the fact is he didn’t urge the Senate to act.

That is a true shame.  Drought conditions continue to worsen, and the shaky state of the economy only amplifies our anxiety.

Well no, Vicky, your feelings about the House Farm Bill are demonstrably not at all like mine – or like most Americans who don’t grudge food to the hungry. Nor are your facts exactly correct.

The fact is the Senate acted. It passed a bill that House members refused to vote on because it gives too much in the way of food subsidies to poor Americans. The House, instead, attempted, in the last few hours of their session to pass a paltry stop-gap disaster-relief bill that many legislators, both Republican and Democratic, considered next to worthless, and jam it through the Senate without allowing for time to consider its provisions. The jokers that make up the House majority didn’t need to create this mess, but they have shown time after time that they will always put ideology above the welfare of Americans.

In this case, House leaders (John Boehner and GOP VP pick, Paul Ryan) were more than willing to bankrupt American farmers just to insure that people who are feeling the Bush recession the hardest don’t get any government-sponsored relief. Because, dontcha  know, government doesn’t know how to do it; if government does know how to do it, we shouldn’t let it because that’s  socialism and we’ll not be free anymore; the tiny fraction of our budget spent providing food aid to our poor will explode the deficit (although we love to explode it when it comes to unnecessary arms spending, unprovoked wars, oil subsidies and tax cuts for millionaires), and, finally, golly-gee, when it comes down to it, feeding our poor probably just isn’t in the Tea Party version of the constitution.

Believe it or not, there’re fools who buy this claptrap. And lots of them live in Missouri. At least some of them will be cheering Miss Vicky on. (For those who are, instead, embarrassed, and who live in her district, there’s an alternative – her name is Teresa Hensley, the Democratic Party candidate in the 4th Congressional District House race.)

Michael Tomasky wrote a piece last week abut why Republicans lie. The conclusion was pretty straightforward: they lie because the truth about their policies is so ugly. If they were to tell the truth about what their policies will do – and this pertains to the farm bill, jobs, and every other talking point Miss Vicky dredged up in her pedestrian effort to ring the various GOP-rigged Pavlovian bells – it would boil down to something like what Tomasky expresses in the following summary:

What we’re going to do here is make sure society’s very richest people have a lot more money. Our theory is they will spend it and that will help the whole economy. History hasn’t been kind to this idea, but it’s our theory and we’re sticking to it. These are the people who pay us to run, after all. Besides which, we really don’t like poor people; we think at bottom that it’s their fault they’re poor, so it doesn’t really matter to us whether anything trickles down to them.

As Tomasky adds: “That’s the truth. How would that sell?”

 

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.

 

There was a short item on child poverty in today’s Kansas City Star:

Missouri among 7 states experiencing “very high growth” in poverty caseloads

By DAVID GOLDSTEIN

The Star’s Washington correspondent

WASHINGTON | Food stamp data show more children suffer poverty in Missouri today than a year ago….

The article cites a report, “The Effects of the Recession on Child Poverty: Poverty Statistics for 2008 and Growth in Need during 2009” [pdf], by the Brookings Institution and First Focus:

…Between August 2008 and August 2009, the number of people receiving food stamps, or what are now called SNAP benefits, increased by 7.0 million, or 24 percent, as monthly caseloads skyrocketed from 29.5 to 36.5 million participants.1 This extraordinary increase means that roughly 3.4 million more children were receiving SNAP benefits in August 2009 than a year earlier, based on data showing that almost half (49 percent) of SNAP participants are children.2 Tracking SNAP recipient data by state provides an initial sense of which parts of the country are experiencing the most dramatic growth in economic need among families with children and where we can expect to see the largest increases in child poverty during 2009….

Specifically for Missouri:

…Seven states combine very high growth in SNAP caseloads over the past year with average levels of child poverty in 2008 (between 15 and 20 percent, or relatively close to the national average). These states, located throughout the country, include Florida, Idaho, Maine, Missouri, North Carolina, Nevada, and Oregon…

[emphasis added]

According to the statistics cited in the First Focus report in 2008 Missouri had a child poverty rate of 18.6% with a margin of error of plus or minus 0.8%. This translates into 259,017 children. The child poverty rate in Mississippi was 30.4%. It was 9.0% in New Hampshire. It was 18.2% for the United States with a margin of error of 0.2%.

From the First Focus report:

…What makes use of food stamps, or to use the modern term, SNAP benefits, a good predictor of child poverty rates? SNAP is the broadest federal safety-net program providing assistance to low-income individuals and families. Almost all individuals and families with monthly earnings and other income below 130 percent of the poverty guidelines and no more than $2,000 in their back account are eligible to receive benefits. Nearly two-thirds of eligible low-income individuals do indeed sign up for and receive benefits. Uptake is higher in families with children and/or lower income: the participation rate was recently estimated as 95 percent among poor families with children.10 With such high participation among families with children, children make up almost half (49 percent) of all SNAP/food stamp participants, with their parents or other adults in their household making up another quarter (27 percent) of participants.11 Not surprisingly, the vast majority of SNAP recipients are poor: 87 percent of SNAP recipients have monthly incomes below the poverty guidelines and the incomes of the remaining 13 percent are not much higher.12 Finally, there is a high correlation between state child poverty rates and state food stamp recipiency rates, considerably higher than the association between child poverty and state unemployment rates (0.82 compared to 0.32 based on 2008 data).13…

And in Missouri from 2008 to 2009?:

…Nineteen states were classified in this analysis as having a very high increase in SNAP participants, namely, an increase equal to 2 to 3 percent of the state population (see table 3). These states include six states in the West (Arizona, Idaho, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington) and nine states in the South (Alabama, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia), as shown in map 2. The remaining four states are scattered across the Midwest and Northeast (Maine, Missouri, Vermont and Wisconsin)…

[emphasis added]

Missouri had an increase of 146,198 SNAP/food stamp participants (a 16% increase over 2008) an increase equivalent to 2.5% of the state’s population.

The conclusion of the report is even more distressing and frightening:

…Updated child poverty statistics will be released by the Census Bureau next August or September, providing further information about the breadth and depth of child poverty in the country in 2009. In the meantime, there is sufficient evidence to predict that most states will experience higher child poverty in 2009 than in 2008. Moreover, judging from past recessions, child poverty rates in many states will continue to rise over the next few years, even after the economy begins to recover.

Such predictions are sobering, since child poverty rates were higher in the United States than in most other rich nations even before the onset of the recession.18 Given the negative impact of child poverty on children’s long-term development, it is important to continue monitoring of child poverty rates, under the official poverty measures analyzed here as well as under the new alternative poverty measures being considered in Congress. Given inevitable lag in reporting of poverty statistics, however, it also is important to examine more contemporaneous measures of need, such as the SNAP participant counts highlighted in this issue brief, to get a more timely sense of the effects of the recession on children and their families.

Meanwhile, the republican majority in the Missouri General Assembly fiddles while the future of Missouri burns.