"A working group of about 20 selected Republicans — most of them conservatives — has been meeting with the leader and House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) for the past two weeks. But with the House slated to go home next Friday for the August recess, Cantor’s office confirmed that no food stamp proposal is on the schedule. This led to a testy exchange on the House floor Thursday between Cantor and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.). “There’s nothing on here about going to conference. The gentleman has told me we’re not going to conference until we’ve passed something on nutrition,” Hoyer said. “We are engaged in discussions with the chairman of the Agriculture Committee as to forging a consensus on a nutrition piece, so we can act again on that,” Cantor answered. “It is not accurate that we don’t intend to eventually go to conference and iron out the differences between the House and Senate on both of those issues, on the Ag policies as well as the nutrition policies.” “I didn’t talk about intentions,” Hoyer snapped. “I talked about facts.” Cantor aides say he is getting a bum rap for being an “honest broker” for warring factions in the party. But Cantor himself has seemed personally invested in the success of the most contentious of the food stamp provisions: a floor amendment allowing states to toughen work requirements for mothers with young children and then share in any savings if the households are dropped from the rolls. Rep. Steve Southerland (R-Fla.) was the designated sponsor. But for weeks beforehand, Cantor had promoted the legislation in Republican leadership meetings and spoke on its behalf on the floor. The amendment is no small matter. It runs 17 pages and is described by Southerland as a virtual bill unto itself. Democrats such as Fudge were furious with its adoption and minutes later that vote contributed to the collapse of the initial farm bill in June. But thus far there has been no sign that Cantor is willing to make any concessions to narrow the scope of the amendment while salvaging some of its ideas. For example, all 50 states could participate in the so-called “pilot program.” That number surprises even Senate Republicans sympathetic with experimenting more in this area. A second big issue is how the states use the savings. All money is fungible, but devoting any food stamp savings to some education or other nutrition purpose could make it more acceptable to some Democrats." m.politico/iphone/story/0713/94767.html
Posted on: Fri, 26 Jul 2013 17:28:23 +0000
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