House GOP stuck on food stamps, which are a bigger rural program that you may think

House Republicans continue to struggle to find agreement on a food-stamp bill. Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said, "We are committed to acting with urgency to bring to the floor a bill under the nutrition title of what was formerly the farm bill," Pete Kasperowicz reports for The Hill. Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said that goes against the GOP's original plan, which was to pass the farm bill without the food-stamp language in order to get to a Senate conference. But Cantor told him he never said that was the plan. (Read more)

There is some concern that if the House doesn't approve a food stamp title, "then basically we’ll go into this conference with the Senate with 11 titles of a 12-title farm bill. They’ll have 12," House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) said in a radio interview, FarmPolicy.com reports. "The Senate will say you didn’t cut anything, therefore why should we cut that $20.5 billion you talked about on the floor?" (Read more)

The Farm Bill has long been a log-rolling exercise by rural interests interested in farming and urban interests interested in anti-hunger programs, but it's mostly rural areas, especially in the South, and many represented by Republicans, that benefit from food stamps, The Wall Street Journal says in the legend of this map. (Click on image for larger version)

In a story accompanying the map, Corey Boles reports, "Funding for nutrition programs has doubled to about $80 billion a year since 2008 in the face of the weakened economy and now accounts for about 80 percent of spending in the roughly $950 billion Senate version of the farm bill. Whether and how to curtail that increase is a primary stumbling block to completing the farm bill." The House wants to cut $20 billion over the next 10 years, while the Senate has said $4 billion on its bill. (Read more)

In Mississippi, for example, 669,000 residents, or 22 percent of the population, receive food assistance, according to the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The percent is 21 percent in Louisiana, Tennessee, Oregon and New Mexico, 20 percent in Georgia and Kentucky, and 19 percent in Alabama, South Carolina, West Virginia, Maine and Florida. To view the benefits by state click here.