By Jerry Hagerstrom

CongressDaily

Sept. 23, 2010

Amid signals that a House vote is nearing on a Senate bill to reauthorize and expand child nutrition programs by cutting food stamp benefits, a leading House Democrat on hunger issues said Wednesday he would need assurances that the lost food-stamp funds would be reinstated before he could vote for it.

Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., chairman of both the Congressional Hunger Center and the House Hunger Caucus, complained that the food stamp program "is being used as an ATM." He noted that Congress passed a teachers' pay and jobs bill this year that used a $12 billion reduction in food stamp benefits beginning in April 2014 as an offset. The child nutrition bill would reduce benefits on Nov. 1, 2013.

But McGovern also said that if the Obama administration, House Education and Labor Chairman George Miller and the House leadership "give us something" to assure that the funds will be restored, he would consider voting for the nutrition bill. Through a spokesman, he later added, "The administration can play a very, very helpful role in finding offsets."

The White House and healthy food advocates are putting pressure on the House to pass the Senate bill before the programs expire Sept. 30, but more than 100 House members and anti-hunger advocates are balking at the offset. The Senate bill would increase spending on school meals programs by $4.5 billion over 10 years and give the Agriculture secretary authority over the food in vending machines in the schools.

A high ranking House Democratic aide said the leadership is "checking with members" and may bring up the bill this week. An anti-hunger lobbyist said the deadline for the whip count is noon today.

More than 100 House members have written House Speaker Pelosi that they oppose cutting food stamp benefits to pay for the child nutrition bill, but McGovern's willingness to consider commitments to restore the funds could provide the leaders an opening.

At a Bipartisan Policy Center conference on nutrition Wednesday, McGovern said he is disappointed that the Obama administration did not insist on its original goal of a $10 billion increase in child nutrition spending over 10 years and did not search for a different offset.

Robin Schepper, executive director of First Lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" initiative, who also spoke at the conference, said she would take McGovern's message to the Domestic Policy Council.

Marshall Matz, a lawyer who represents anti-hunger groups and the School Nutrition Association, made up of school meal preparers, said he could envision a "child nutrition corrections" bill that could also address a provision in the Senate bill that gives the Agriculture secretary authority to set meal prices nationwide. Matz said that nutrition advocates are concerned that an increase in prices would reduce the number of children who eat school lunch.

Meanwhile, the AFL-CIO; American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; the American Public Human Services Association and other groups have all sent letters to Congress opposing use of the food stamp offset. But the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, which had opposed use of conservation funds as an offset, issued a statement urging passage of the bill.

Although there have been reports that the bill would cut $4.5 billion from food stamp benefits, a USDA official explained in a memo today that the bill would cut only $2.2 billion directly from food stamp benefits, with another $1.3 billion coming from a restructuring of a nutrition education program for food stamp beneficiaries and another $1.1 billion coming from a provision that allows the Agriculture secretary to include the value of surplus commodity purchases in the school lunch budget.

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21st Century Agriculture, Bipartisanship