THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, March 11, 1995 TAG: 9503100010
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
To reduce the federal deficit, everything has to be on the cutting table.
Republicans are right that ``everything'' includes food stamps, the nation's second-largest public-assistance program (after Medicaid). Democrats are right that food-stamp reform should not take food off poor children's tables.
Properly done, food-stamp reform will still feed children who need feeding. But it will also challenge current assumptions: that some people are entitled to food stamps indefinitely, and unless the federal government feeds some parents' children, they won't get fed.
Twenty-seven million Americans - one in 10 overall, one in seven children - receive food stamps. That includes most of the 14.5 million Americans who receive the array of benefits - food stamps and subsidized housing, child care, health care and school meals - that accompany Aid to Families with Dependent Children. It includes 1.5 million Americans who don't have dependents, disabilities . . . or a job. And it will cost taxpayers, if the increases the Clinton administration requests prevail, $150 billion over the next five years.
Responding to governors' insistence that states can administer the food-stamp program more efficiently than Washington, the GOP has proposed folding food-stamp money into block grants with other public-assistance programs, reducing the increase in the food-stamp portion by $16 billion, and capping federal food-stamp spending at $134 million. States would divvy the grants among the major welfare programs to meet state needs.
But Republican legislators from farm states now object to block grants, as does the Clinton administration. Reducing the food-stamp increase by $16 billion over five years could, they say, mean a drop in retail food sales of $3 billion to $7 billion and a decline in food business and farm earnings. Critics also predict that capping federal spending and detaching federal strings, which prevent state disparities in food-stamp eligibility, benefits and nutritional standards, will increase hunger and malnutrition among poor children, especially in the poorer states and in harder times.
But federal farm subsidies, too, must be on the cutting table. Food prices vary countrywide. Critics who insist on keeping certain nutritional standards in the program also reject proposals that would restrict food-stamp purchases to foodstuffs with nutritional value. States can choose to supplement federal funds, or be lobbied into it. Congress, ditto.
Meantime, saving the $3 billion a year that the Clinton administration says are lost to administrative error and fraud would just about cover the $16 billion in cuts the GOP has proposed.
Critics of the food-stamp program as-is and critics of the program as the Republicans propose the program be got compromise legislation through the House Agriculture Committee last week. It would:
Retain federal control over the food-stamp program, except in states that institute a fraud-fighting credit-card type distribution system. Only Maryland has that system now, so continued federal control means less savings in administrative costs.
Toughen penalties against grocers and recipients for fraud, which should mean some savings.
Cut food-stamp funding by 10 percent, or the $16 billion the Republicans initially proposed, in part by ending automatic increases indexed to inflation and limiting increases to 2 percent a year.
Require that able-bodied recipients work 20 hours a week after the first 90 days of food-stamp benefits unless unemployment in their area is unusually high.
Deny benefits to legal immigrants, who are customarily admitted to the country only after showing that they or their sponsors are capable of paying their way.
What got through this committee won't get through Congress intact. But it heads the program and the debate in the right direction.
KEYWORDS: FOOD STAMP WELFARE FRAUD by CNB