WASHINGTON, June 8, 2016 - House Republican leaders are
making it clear that they want to push ahead with reforms to food stamps and
school meal programs in the next Congress. Speaker Paul Ryan was joined by
House Agriculture Chairman Mike Conaway and other lawmakers on Tuesday in
announcing a plan that they said would ensure that federal assistance programs
do a better job of lifting people out of poverty.
Much of the 35-page
plan is familiar, and it is more a set of principles than specific
proposals. A brief reference to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
(SNAP), formerly food stamps, emphasized the need for getting able-bodied
recipients into jobs. “Part of our effort to reform the welfare system includes
identifying policies that prevent or discourage working-age people from
obtaining work or preparing for work,” the plan said.
The plan also outlines changes to the national school meals
programs that track legislation that a House committee approved last month. The
bill would allow up to three states to run school nutrition programs on their
own, an idea that Democrats strongly oppose.
At a news conference with Ryan, Conaway said it was vital to
address the “deeper root causes” of poverty. “We can address hunger. We can
address homelessness, but unless you fix those core issues within the people
themselves, then it’s just a circle that they will be in, and it’s a downward
spiral that most of them are in,” he said.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who was in Petersburg,
Virginia, Tuesday to promote USDA’s summer feeding program, singled out for
criticism the GOP proposal to give federal nutrition funding to states so they
could run meals programs themselves. Block-granting school meal funding “in
many cases means limiting access,” Vilsack told reporters.
The House Agriculture Committee’s ranking Democrat, Collin
Peterson, warned that the Republican insistence on SNAP work requirements could
make it impossible to pass another farm bill. “This proposal is strikingly
similar to amendments that nearly derailed the 2014 farm bill,” Peterson said.
“I believe that if the House chooses to go down this path we will never be able
to pass another farm bill.”
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