Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
The U.S. House will reconvene Tuesday to vote on a $26.1 billion state aid package, providing Medicaid and teachers’ jobs funding to cash-strapped states. And while most Senate Democrats remained mum on the mechanism used to fund the bill — cuts to the food stamp program — House Democrats aren’t.
The state-aid package could only pass the Senate if it were entirely deficit-neutral. To fully offset its cost, Senate Democrats controversially cut what ultimately added up to $12 billion from an extension, included in the stimulus plan, to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. According to economists, the food stamps this program provides are the single most stimulative government spending. In Iowa, for every $1 million invested in food assistance programs, about 10 Iowa jobs are saved or created, according to a report by the nonpartisan Iowa Policy Project.
But now The Hill is reporting that U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., the head of the Agriculture Committee subcommittee that oversees the program, will attempt to find a different offset and to keep food stamps fully intact. Other House members support that plan.
“This is a bitter pill to swallow,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said in a statement to The Hill. “I fought very hard for the food assistance money in the Recovery Act and the fact is that participation in the food stamps program has jumped dramatically with the economic crisis, from 31.1 million persons to 38.2 million just in one year.
“But I know that states across the nation and my own state of Connecticut also desperately need these resources to save jobs and avoid draconian cuts to essential services for low income families,” she added. “As you can imagine, for me personally, it’s like ‘Sophie’s Choice.’”
DeLauro oversees annual spending on the food stamps program as chairwoman of the House Appropriations subcommittee for Agriculture. Asked if she would try to restore the food stamps money in future legislation, DeLauro said, “Yes, absolutely, I will be fighting for these funds.”
The question is how. My understanding is that the House won’t be able to change the bill — it needs to give an up-or-down vote to get the funding to states as quickly as possible. (Were the House to alter the bill, the Senate would need to come back to vote on it again.) It could, however, originate a later bill restoring the funding and finding new offsets for it, and then could encourage the Senate to vote for that. But I’ll check in on process later today.
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