WASHINGTON - Under growing pressure to offset new spending with cuts, a proposed child nutrition measure would get its funding from an unusual source: a deeper slice out of the nation's food support program.
U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., is now leading a group of more than 100 House Democrats who say they are prepared to draw a line.
"This is one of the more egregious cases of robbing Peter to pay Paul, and is a vote we do not take lightly," Ellison and Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern wrote in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, protesting the bill last week that first trimmed the food stamp program to make sure a state aid bill got passed.
With the child nutrition bill taking a second whack at food stamps funding, Ellison and 105 Democrats are calling for a different way to pay for it.
More than 438,000 Minnesotans depend on food supports -- a number that has increased nearly 50 percent since 2008. More than 40.8 million people, nearly half of them children, receive food stamps in the United States. The program got a temporary 13.6 percent increase through the 2009 stimulus program.
The child nutrition bill is an issue championed by First Lady Michelle Obama. The tradeoff would end the stimulus boost to food support in November 2013, at a cost of an estimated $59 a month per four-person household.
While both the state aid bill and child nutrition bill are supported by progressive Democrats like Ellison -- they provide teacher jobs, Medicaid funding and reduced-fee school lunches -- Democrats are up in arms because one safety net is being raided to pay for another.
The White House and First Lady's office have kept the food stamp issue at arms' length, declining to comment about the child nutrition measure or Ellison's letter.
Kevin Concannon, a USDA undersecretary, said the administration is anxious for the House to pass the child nutrition measure. "That's what we need right now," he said. "That's what is immediately before us."
The $4.5 billion child nutrition reauthorization bill -- which has passed the Senate and could be taken up in the House soon -- would improve nutrition of school lunches, help fund lunch subsidies and give the USDA more control regulating what foods are sold in schools.
Originally, the stimulus food stamp benefits were set to be phased out gradually through inflation, but stagnant food prices had pushed that date back as far as 2017. The state aid bill moved up the benefits' expiration date to April 2014.
Between the state aid bill and the child nutrition bill, $14.1 billion will be saved by reducing the food stamp benefits, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
But thanks to the recession, the number of people in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program has already ballooned. Other sources of help -- like the 300 food pantries in Minnesota -- have been stretched, said Jill Hiebert, communications manager for Hunger Solutions Minnesota.
"That's definitely a concern for having enough food and having enough food shelves open," Hiebert said. "It's going to be a strain on an already strained system."
Hiebert said that unlike food pantries, food support injects money back into the economy because people are buying groceries.
With the child nutrition bill, Ellison and McGovern are calling for a funding source besides food support, though they have yet to make a formal proposal. McGovern said plenty of options exist, such as cutting farm subsidies.
When Ellison voted to support the state aid bill last week, he said he accepted the food stamp reduction because the bill added more than 2,300 education jobs in Minnesota. "The teachers will be in front of the classroom, but the kids might be hungry coming to school," Ellison said. "I hate being put in the position of having to make this kind of choice."
Jeremy Herb • 202-408-2723
