As promised over at the Digging Deep Campaign, here’s the entire text of the response I received from Senator Bob Casey‘s office when I wrote regarding maintaining food stamp assistance in the Farm Bill. If/when I get something from Senator Pat Toomey‘s office, I’ll be sure to post it here.
I welcome your thoughts – and will start digging into Casey’s positions on the mammoth bill. Since he’s representing me in the Senate, I probably should pay attention to what he’s doing on my behalf.
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Thank you for taking the time to contact me regarding nutrition programs in the 2012 Farm Bill. I appreciate hearing from you.
Roughly every five years, Congress reauthorizes the Farm Bill which governs federal farm and food policy. On April 26, 2012, the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee met, modified and approved the 2012 Farm Bill. The bill is now pending on the Senate legislative calendar. I am hopeful that the full Senate will vote on the 2012 Farm Bill soon. If passed into law, the 2012 Farm Bill would reduce the deficit by approximately $23 billion dollars through the elimination of unnecessary subsidies and the consolidation of programs. I worked to improve the Farm Bill so it was more fair and equitable for Pennsylvania agriculture. The current version of the 2012 Farm Bill includes benefits for Pennsylvania’s specialty crop farmers, dairy farmers, and conservation programs; and it improves the Secretary’s ability to purchase foods for use in federal nutrition programs. Still, more work must be done on this legislation.
The Committee-passed version of the 2012 Farm Bill supports food assistance programs, including The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). I introduced an amendment to the Farm Bill to allow USDA to consider the needs of states and the demands placed on emergency feeding organizations, such as food banks, when purchasing commodities through the TEFAP program. This amendment is included in the current bill. The 2012 Farm Bill also includes provisions to improve access to healthy foods in food deserts and to fund SNAP education and training programs. I have heard from many people about the “heat and eat” provision of SNAP. The Farm Bill permits participating states to coordinate SNAP and the Low Income Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) allowing the LIHEAP agency to provide cash benefits directly to SNAP households. The current version of the 2012 Farm Bill would require at least $10 per year in LIHEAP assistance in order to qualify for the Standard Utility Allowance in the SNAP eligibility determination process.
It is very important to me that the Senate develops nutrition assistance policy that will help Pennsylvanians. I will continue to work with my colleagues on nutrition policy in preparation for when the full Senate considers the 2012 Farm Bill.
Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future about this or any other matter of importance to you.
For more information on this or other issues, I encourage you to visit my website, http://casey.senate.gov. I hope you will find this online office a comprehensive resource to stay up-to-date on my work in Washington, request assistance from my office, or share with me your thoughts on the issues that matter most to you and to Pennsylvania.
Sincerely,
Bob Casey
United States Senator
P.S. If you would like to respond to this message, please use the contact form on my website: http://casey.senate.gov/contact/
Don’t hold your breath waiting for Toomey; his office stopped responding to individual taxpayer’s comments several months ago.
It seems to me that they could save a _lot_ of money by not subsidizing the huge GMO-filled agribusinesses that they are currently supporting, without even touching the assistance programs. But, poor people don’t donate to campaigns (whereas Monsanto et al most certainly do), so perhaps it is quixotic of me to even contemplate them making that sort of budgetary decision…
Why on earth did they stop responding to constituents? Wait, I don’t want to know.
And yes, one of the main reasons I want to do some digging is because Casey’s response highlights the feel-good ‘let’s help the poor people’ side of things, while not discussing his position on Big Ag at all. And even though agriculture is PA’s largest industry, we don’t have the large scale CAFOs that other states do (thank you, rolling hills) so I’m hoping he’s truly supporting PA’s family farmers.
It would be nice if the assistance were going to PA’s family farmers; please do dig that out! I know that when I lived in MA, basically none of the Farm Bill’s money went there, as the rolling hills prevented large-scale agriculture of any kind, and no small farms were being supported. However, given that he said _nothing_ about Big Ag (vs family farms), I think it would be reasonable to assume that the bill still hugely supports CAFO’s, GMO’s, etc. Think about it: if there were provision for truly helping the genuinely small-scale family farms, he would have been screaming it from the rooftops! Ferret away, darling, but what you are bound to find will not smell good…
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