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.