Fighting hunger or the poor? Political battle over SNAP resumes -- April 19, 2018 column

 By MARSHA MERCER

Long before President Donald Trump bestowed a lavish tax break on the rich and proposed “harvest baskets” for the poor, another president said:

“That hunger and malnutrition should persist in a land such as ours is embarrassing and intolerable.”

Name that president. Was it Democrat FDR, JFK or LBJ?

Guess again. Republican Richard Nixon sent Congress the optimistic message in May 1969 that “the most bounteous of nations” should expand food stamps as part of an array of approaches to beat hunger. The program grew dramatically in the 1970s.

Back then, fighting hunger – not the poor -- was a bipartisan cause.

Then, presidential candidate Ronald Reagan reaped political hay by demonizing “welfare queens.” In office, he slashed the social safety net, including food stamps.

When Republican Newt Gingrich ran for president, briefly, in 2012, he called President Barack Obama “the best food stamp president in American history.” It wasn’t a compliment.

More than 46 million people received food stamps that year. As the economy improved, food stamp rolls dropped. About 40 million participated in January 2018, the lowest level since 2010. 

But, to borrow a Reagan phrase, here we go again.

It’s an election year, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, as food stamps are officially called, is a political flash point.

Democrats on the House Agriculture Committee were in open revolt Wednesday over a bill by Chairman Mike Conaway, Republican of Texas, that cuts spending and imposes new work requirements for almost all SNAP participants.  

Conaway contended his bill provides participants “the hope of a job and a skill and a better future for themselves and their families.”   

But Democrats, while supporting current work requirements, condemned the new rules, which were formulated without their input.

“Let me be clear: This bill, as currently written, kicks people off the SNAP program,” said Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota, the committee’s top Democrat, who called it an “ideological attack” on SNAP. It would create “giant, untested bureaucracies at the state level” lacking the money needed for meaningful job training, he said.

About 2 million people — particularly in low-income working families with children — would receive less or lose benefits altogether, the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said in an analysis. A few would receive higher benefits, due to changes in how earnings are counted, but the net effect would still be a significant cut overall.

At $70 billion a year, food stamps are about three-quarters of spending in the Farm Bill, which also pays for crop subsidies, farm credit and land conservation. The bill cuts food stamp spending by $17.1 billion over 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office estimates.

The committee approved the bill on a party line vote, but its future is murky. Even if the full House approves it, the Senate Agriculture Committee plans to write a bipartisan bill. In the past, an alliance of rural and urban lawmakers with different priorities has pushed the Farm Bill through Congress.

It’s worth remembering that 43 percent of SNAP participants live in a household where someone works. Rules already require participants to meet work requirements unless exempt because of age, disability or another reason. Able-bodied adults without dependents – ABAWDs in government jargon -- 18 to 49 can receive benefits for three months but after that must work or be in training. 

The House bill requires all work-capable adults aged 18 to 59 who are not disabled or caring for a child under 6 to demonstrate every month they are working or in job-training 20 hours a week.

Critics see punitive and racial overtones in the bill.

“The images of `able-bodied’ men not working are of African American men,” Rep. David Scott, Democrat of Georgia, said at the hearing.

“I guarantee you, if all the people who were on food stamps were white, there wouldn’t be this,” he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The House bill is an embarrassment, as was the Trump administration’s plan to begin distributing non-perishable items in “harvest boxes” to replace some food stamp benefits. That plan was widely panned as unworkable and seems to have been scrapped.   

The House bill should meet a similar end. In this “most bounteous of nations,” the Senate should start over with a bill Democrats and Republicans can support.

©2018 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Serving uncertainty: Pass the salt?

By MARSHA MERCER

Hello, whole milk, my old friend. Welcome back, eggs. Where you been, salt?  

The federal government is about to write new nutritional guidelines aimed at keeping Americans healthy. Whole milk soon may be back in our good graces, along with eggs and even salt. Unless they’re not.   

No wonder people are confused and peeved, if not angry.

The last thing anyone wants in nutrition rules is uncertainty. Why waste precious time deciding whether to buy a can of chicken noodle soup based on its milligrams of sodium if the science now says sodium is not a big deal? Our knowledge of  nutrition and health is constantly changing.

A headline on the front page of Wednesday’s Washington Post read: “A thinning case that fat causes heart ills – New studies vindicate whole milk as dietary advice is revised.” Uh-oh.    

We’ve been told for decades to substitute low- and non-fat milk for whole milk to prevent heart disease and other health problems. It turns out that whole milk may contribute less to heart trouble than the low-fat foods loaded with refined grains and sugar that we substitute for it.   

In other words, cookies and cakes, even the low-fat variety, are no solution.

Researchers found that people who included more milk fat in their diets actually suffered lower levels of heart disease than those who consumed less. And, no, the studies were not paid for by the dairy industry.

Cholesterol also isn’t the problem we once thought, so eggs, red meat and shrimp may no longer set off alarm sirens. We eat too much salt, but it may not be the culprit it seemed. And on top of all that, one study found that breakfast may not be the most important meal of the day.   

Naturally, people are frustrated. It’s tempting to throw federal Dietary Guidelines out with the skim milk.

“People may be losing confidence in the guidelines,” Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., said Wednesday at a House Agriculture Committee hearing, adding that many of his constituents “don’t believe this stuff anymore. 

"They’re “flat out ignoring this stuff,” he said.

“Given the public’s skepticism, we should maybe reconsider why we are doing this,” Peterson said.

We are doing this because Congress in 1990 required that federal dietary guidelines be issued at least every five years. The guidelines set policy for everything from school lunches and other federal food programs to advice to individuals about what to eat to prevent such chronic conditions as heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, cancer and obesity.

Dietary Guidelines 2015 are due to be released by the end of the year.

An independent advisory committee that is helping the departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture prepare the 2015 guidelines issued a massive report with several controversial recommendations. During the public comment period, about 29,000 comments were submitted – vastly more than five years ago.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell said the committee’s report is not a draft of the new rules, which have not yet been written.

In a blog post this week previewing the new guidelines, Vilsack and Burwell said the new rules will look a lot like the old.  

“Fruits and vegetables, low-fat dairy, whole grains and lean meats and other proteins and limited amounts of saturated fats, added sugars and sodium remain the building blocks of a healthy lifestyle,” they said.  

Two recommendations by the advisory committee are definitely out. There will be no sustainability goals and no tax on sugary soft drinks, Vilsack and Burwell said. Sustainability refers to the environmental impact of food production. Meat and other producers that require a lot of water lobbied heavily against including sustainability in the guidelines. Soft-drink companies rallied against the tax.

Critics still will complain that the federal government shouldn’t tell us what to eat. Republicans criticize the “food police” as vociferously as health advocates complain about subsidies to sugar and corn. Conservatives want the National Academy of Sciences Food and Nutrition Board to review the guidelines before they’re released to the public. That could delay the process.

So, what should you do if you’re fed up with the government’s changing recommendations about good nutrition? The most practical advice may be: Get used to it. And, to be on the safe side, put the salt away.  

(C) 2015 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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