Politics as Expressions of Culture Wednesday saw the U.S. Senate attempting to tackle the Farm Bill, a regular outlay and regulation package that has, in conservative reaction to a Democratic president, suddenly become controversial. One thing that is not controversial, at least among legislators, is an amendment passed by unanimous consent: The Senate’s Farm Bill—a large piece of legislation passed once every few years to regulate, fund and subsidize various programs related to agriculture and food production—already included language that would cut food stamps by about $4.1 billion. “Under current law, there is a lifetime ban for convicted drug felons, though many states have opted out of or modified that ban,” reads a statement from Vitter’s office. “Vitter’s amendment would extend the lifetime food stamp ban to dangerous sex offenders and murderers.” Timothy Smeeding, director of the University of Wisconsin’s Institute for Research on Poverty, called the amendment “ridiculous.” “It doesn’t save anyone any money,” he told MSNBC. “It just makes sort of a political statement that we don’t forgive people for crimes once they pay their dues. We’re just going to punish them forever.” He argued that making it more difficult for convicted felons to meet their basic nutritional needs would encourage recidivism. There’s research that supports Smeeding’s claim. Researchers at Yale University have found that making drug offenders ineligible for food stamps puts them “at greater risk of engaging in dangerous, sexual risk behaviors in order to obtain food,” according to the Yale News. Many former drug offenders in states where they are ineligible for food stamps “are turning to prostitution and other behaviors that put them at risk for HIV and other negative outcomes in order to obtain food.” The bill could also have other unintended consequences. For example, “the amendment would mean lower SNAP benefits for their children and other family members,” writes Bob Greenstein, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. (Resnikoff) It certainly is the sort of feel-good measure one can sympathize with, but is it really worth it? That is, the warm fuzzy legislators feel when making such bold stands against crime seemingly ignores the question of what the bill is actually for. While one can certainly sympathize with the desire to punish people for the rest of their lives, and even—godlike—to later generations, what are the real effects of such outlooks? As Helen Dodson reported last month, for Yale News: Each year, nearly three-quarters of a million people are released from U.S. prisons. Many are already highly vulnerable to homelessness, HIV infection, and hunger due to uncertainty about how to find and pay for food (known as “food insecurity”). Making matters worse, many individuals convicted of drug felonies are banned for life by a 1996 federal law from obtaining food assistance via the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formally known as food stamps, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), formerly known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children. States were allowed to opt out of the federal law. Only 16 states and the District of Columbia did; 24 others implemented a modified version of the ban; 10 kept it fully in place for life, even for mothers and women who are pregnant. A possible result of this policy is that many released drug offenders, particularly women and mothers, are turning to prostitution and other behaviors that put them at risk for HIV and other negative outcomes in order to obtain food. The Yale researchers worked in collaboration with All of Us or None, a California organization that fights discrimination against current and former inmates and their families, to study the link between food insecurity and sexual risk behaviors among returning prisoners. They surveyed 110 individuals recently released from prisons in Connecticut and California, which have partial bans, and Texas, which has an outright, mandatory lifetime ban on food assistance for drug convicts. Some of their findings were: • 91 percent reported themselves as “food insecure.” • 37 percent did not eat for an entire day in the past month, which is food insecurity in its most severe form; they were more likely to use heroin, cocaine, or alcohol before sex, and were more likely to exchange sex for money than those who had at least one meal each day. • 61 percent did not receive food assistance benefits, and those who did reported receiving insufficient benefits. • 38 percent of women living with children did not eat for a day in the past month. • 25 percent of women living with children reported their children not eating for a day in the past month. The New York Times responded to the Yale study by making the obvious point: The researchers call for further study. But it is already clear that the bans are counterproductive and that it is time for states that have not completely lifted them to do so. People who have served their time face the hard task of establishing new lives in the world beyond prison. They need all the help they can get feeding and clothing their families and themselves. And herein lies the larger question. Most states call their prison system "correctional"; the public discourse about prison frequently uses the word "rehabilitation". But how can we "correct" and "rehabilitate" when willfully excluding, deliberately creating conditions that encourage recidivism? The Republican agenda in cutting food stamp access is clear; the Democratic outlook considerably less so. What, then, is the missing context? Perhaps it is wrong to cast this as Feelgood v. Reality, but that is a fairly apparent prima facie assessment. What are the subtleties? ____________________ Notes: Resnikoff, Ned. "No food stamps for people convicted of violent crimes". All In With Chris Hayes. May 24, 2013. TV.MSNBC.com. May 26, 2013. http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/05/24/vitt...stamps-for-those-convicted-of-violent-crimes/ Dodson, Helen. "Ban on food stamps leads to hunger, HIV risk among former drug felons". Yale News. March 25,2013. News.Yale.edu. May 26, 2013. http://news.yale.edu/2013/03/25/ban-food-stamps-leads-hunger-hiv-risk-among-former-drug-felons Editorial Board. "Unfair Punishments". The New York Times. March 16, 2013. NYTimes.com. May 26, 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/opinion/sunday/unfair-punishments-of-ex-offenders.html
Farm Bill Flaming Failure Drama or Farce? GOP Farm Bill Falls Short ... In House "It's silly. It's sad. It's juvenile. It's unprofessional. It's amateur hour." —Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) While it is hard to overstate the stupidity of the House GOP Farm Bill, it might be rather quite easy to understate the shockwaves rolling through the Beltway today after the Republican-led House failed to pass the majority caucus' own Farm Bill. A major piece of farm legislation went down to a surprising and dramatic defeat in the House on Thursday, as conservatives joined with most Democrats to oppose the $940 billion bill. The House voted 195-234, with 62 Republicans joining 172 Democrats, to defeat the bill. The vote was regarded as a surprise, and represented an embarrassment to the House GOP leadership team. President Barack Obama had threatened to veto the House legislation had it somehow eventually reached his desk .... .... Lawmakers from both parties were quick to trade blame for the farm bill’s defeat, which would have set up negotiations with the Senate to resolve differences between the House proposal and the farm legislation passed on June 10 by the Senate. Republicans said that Democrats had failed to produce the necessary votes to pass the legislation, while Democrats blamed ideological disunity within the GOP. Republicans were broad-sided when the final bill failed to garner the votes for passage, with House Republican Leadership Aides saying that Democrats "didn't raise any issues before the vote, they came at the last minute and decided to play tricks." "The question is: are Democrats in the House willing to govern, and today's demonstration proves that that might not be the case," Rory Cooper, the communications director for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., told reporters. (O'Brien and Thorp) While the Senate has passed a Farm Bill that liberals disdain, they did manage to haul in enough Republican votes to push it through on a 66-27 vote. As Mark Bittman of The New York Times explains: The current versions of the Farm Bill in the Senate (as usual, not as horrible as the House) and the House (as usual, terrifying) could hardly be more frustrating. The House is proposing $20 billion in cuts to SNAP — equivalent, says Beckmann, to “almost half of all the charitable food assistance that food banks and food charities provide to people in need.” Deficit reduction is the sacred excuse for such cruelty, but the first could be achieved without the second. Two of the most expensive programs are food stamps, the cost of which has justifiably soared since the beginning of the Great Recession , and direct subsidy payments. This pits the ability of poor people to eat — not well, but sort of enough — against the production of agricultural commodities. That would be a difficult choice if the subsidies were going to farmers who could be crushed by failure, but in reality most direct payments go to those who need them least. That is the Farm Bill that failed today in the House of Representatives. There is a constant discussion among Democrats and liberals that, if we are to take Speaker Boehner in good faith, he is terrible at his job. The general clownery in the House GOP caucus is astounding most days, but this is one of those glaring farces that touches on so many aspects of the conservative malady. Cruelty, poltics over policy to ever-excessive degrees, and the kind of pitiful lack of planning and discipline we can only expect from, well, a House leadership that has abandoned governing. Republicans in the Senate fought for four billion dollars worth of food assistance cuts that Democrats accepted and Democratic supporters denounce. Still, Reid and the Democrats managed to win seventeen GOP votes. The House responded with a five-fold raise, twenty billion worth of cuts to food assistance. The bill stood no chance in the Senate, and the White House had already promised a veto. In the end, it was a demonstrative vote, another Republican bill to satisfy the hard right while having no chance of seeing the light of day. And still, they failed. Twenty-four Democrats backed the House bill, for whatever reason, but Majority Leader Cantor lost over a quarter of his caucus. While the bill did, technically, have a "majority of the majority", it certainly wasn't enough to pass without Democratic votes. This is right up there with McConnell filibustering his own bill. Or Boehner forgetting to formally adjourn the 112th Congress until an hour before the 113th opened. The House Republican leadership, it seems, cannot lead. ____________________ Notes: Kapur, Sahil. "Pelosi: GOP’s Farm Bill Failure Is ‘Major Amateur Hour’". TPM Livewire. June 20, 2013. LiveWire.TalkingPointsMemo.com. June 20, 2013. http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/pelosi-gops-farm-bill-failure-is-amateur-hour O'Brien, Michael and Frank Thorp. "Farm bill fails in the House". First Read. June 20, 2013. FirstRead.NBCNews.com. June 20, 2013. http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/20/19060053-farm-bill-fails-in-the-house Bittman, Mark. "Welfare for the Wealthy". Opinionator. June 4, 2013. Opinionator.Blogs.NYTimes.com. June 20, 2013. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/04/welfare-for-the-wealthy/
Yeah, it is an amazing thing to behold. I don’t know what to say. And many of those Republicans who voted against the Farm Bill today were from solid red states where agriculture is a huge part of the economy. This is the Farm Bill after all, and not normally an contentious issue. But I think this very clearly demonstrates a severe lack of leadership, acumen, and a strong aversion to compromise. House Republicans mirror the party at large. It is a rudderless sinking ship. Disorder appears to be the norm, and that is more than just a bit scary. Gerrymandering and the Republican entertainment industry are killing the Republican Party. It was rather amusing to see Republican Majority Leader Cantor blame the defeat on Democrats. Someone needs to remind Cantor that Republicans have a rather large majority in the House. But he knows that, his diatribe was pure political demagoguery, an attempt to save some face.
One of Those Things One of Those Things .... It's one of those things that annoys me about cosnervatives in recent years. The general pattern is seen in terms of the Friday news dump and scandalmongering, but in this case it's just Paul Ryan—you know, the budget wonk, the numbers guy, for the House GOP caucus? the former vice presidential nominee?—having trouble with arithmetic. So, a Beltway issue arises late in the week, is defused over the weekend. Come Monday, Republicans plow ahead as if the two previous days hadn't happened. It's the most bizarre thing. It can actually be really simple to explain: • Friday: He said four! He said four! He said four when we all know the answer is five. • Saturday: Sources confirm that the question was two plus two. • Sunday: Pundits report that experts have confirmed that two plus two is four. • Monday: He said four! We all know the answer is five! This president is so terrible at math! Or, perhaps, to demonstrate: After House Republican leaders suffered an embarrassing setback last week, watching their members defeat their own farm bill, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) reflexively blamed the House Democratic minority for the failure. It didn't matter that it was the House GOP that killed the bill; what mattered was an incoherent attempt at playing the blame game. But that was last week, and the dust had not yet settled. After taking the weekend to think about it, clearly prominent Republican lawmakers will have come up with more sensible talking points, right? Wrong .... Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) said Monday that Republicans in the House "can't govern" if Democrats do not keep their word on how they plan to vote, laying blame for the defeat of last week's farm bill at the feet of the minority party. "The Democrats promised 40 votes and they didn't deliver the votes that they promised," Ryan told MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "Our leaders brought the bill to the floor based on the commitment that the Democrats from the agricultural districts made, and then during consideration on the floor, they reneged on the promise." Look, I realize Paul Ryan has a terrible memory, and he's not especially good with numbers, but this is demonstrably ridiculous. Indeed, it's not at all complicated. There were 40 House Dems who intended to vote for the Republicans' farm bill, but many balked after GOP lawmakers moved it further to the right, which hardly constitutes a broken promise. In the end, 24 of the 40 supported the legislation. But here's the key: if those 16 Democrats who balked had voted for the bill, it would have fallen short anyway. Ryan doesn't even need a calculator: the bill had 195 votes. Add 16 to that, and you get 211 votes—seven short of what was needed. Ryan's party killed its own legislation, and this drive to blame Democrats isn't just foolish, it's also at odds with basic arithmetic: 195 + 16 = 211, not 218. (Benen) The numbers haven't changed since last week. And the House Budget Committee Chairman is allegedly a pretty sharp numbers guy. So, what, on the merit of the fact that a weekend occurred right when it was supposed to, House Republicans decided to try it again? I mean, who knows? Perhaps the laws of arithmetic randomly changed sometime after tea on Sunday afternoon, you know? ____________________ Notes: Benen, Steve. "Helping Paul Ryan with arithmetic". The Maddow Blog. June 24, 2013. MaddowBlog.MSNBC.com. June 25, 2013. http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/06/24/19117522-helping-paul-ryan-with-arithmetic
