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By Jerry Hagstrom, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, Jan. 19, 2007

In the 1980s, conservatives regaled audiences with tales of welfare mothers in pink Cadillacs who sold their food stamps to unscrupulous retailers for cash that they spent on drugs and liquor. Then-Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., called the program a "multibillion-dollar shakedown of the American taxpayers." In 1994, then-House Minority Leader Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., proposed in his Contract With America that states take over the food stamp program.

Republicans backed away from Gingrich's plan to end federal food stamps, and so the government was able to act quickly to help the millions of people who were displaced in the worst natural disaster in American history, the hurricanes Katrina, Wilma, and Rita in 2005. In the past 20 years, the program's rates of fraud and abuse have dropped dramatically with the shift from coupons to electronic benefit transfer cards, which are used like debit cards in grocery stores and are difficult to turn into cash.

The food stamp program's basic job is to help the lowest-income people in the country buy food. But the 1988 Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act gave the Agriculture Department, which administers the program, authority to provide food stamps to disaster victims even if they are not poor. Before the hurricanes hit the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005, the disaster-response team in USDA's Food and Nutrition Service was watching the weather and sending food to warehouses in Louisiana and Texas. USDA later airlifted infant formula, baby food, and other commodities to Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. But as important as these supplies were in the initial days when grocery stores were closed, most hurricane victims got food for the next three months through EBT cards that Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns authorized within days of the tragedy. Because the cards work in any grocery store in the country that cooperates with the food stamp program, hurricane victims could use the cards wherever they ended up. When the benefits ran out, the Agriculture Department could add more money to the cards electronically without having to use the mails.

"In the federal response to this national catastrophe, there is a bright spot," Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., a former Senate Agriculture Committee chairman, said on the Senate floor even as the Federal Emergency Management Agency was coming under fire. "USDA has quietly and efficiently assisted thousands of displaced persons."

Food stamps' strong performance on the Gulf Coast was perhaps the first and most visible step in the rehabilitation of the program's reputation. In October 2006, the Government Accountability Office said that as the use of electronic cards became universal between 1995 and 2005, the level of trafficking -- the sale of food stamps for cash -- declined from 3.8 cents per dollar in benefits to 1 cent per dollar. At the same time, according to USDA, the state agencies that determine eligibility and distribute the benefits have become so much more efficient in certifying eligibility that the payment error rate has gone down from 10.7 percent in 1998 to 5.48 percent in 2005.

Politics created and saved food stamps. Congress established the permanent food stamp program in 1964 not just to help poor Americans but also to get an increasingly urban- and suburban-dominated Congress to vote for a farm bill. In 1995, then-House Agriculture Committee Chairman (and now Sen.) Pat Roberts, R-Kan., saved food stamps by convincing Gingrich and other leaders that urban members wouldn't vote for future farm bills if they didn't reauthorize food stamps. The 1996 welfare reform law eliminated eligibility for almost all legal immigrants and able-bodied, childless adults between the ages of 18 and 50, and participation plummeted from 28 million in 1994 to 17.5 million in 2000. Subsequent bills have restored eligibility for most immigrants who have been in the country for five years.

Jim Weill, executive director of the Food Research Action Center, says that the food stamp program has become more important than ever because the number of Americans with low-paying jobs has grown. He sees the 2007 farm bill as an opportunity to raise the food stamp benefit, which is less than $1 per meal, and to give USDA authority to provide food stamps to disaster victims for up to a year.

Weill will have to contend with budget pressures, but food stamps are much less vulnerable to attack than they were in the past. Agriculture Secretary Johanns, a former Republican governor of Nebraska, sent an e-mail of praise: "The food stamp program effectively provides vital nutrition assistance to over 26 million low-income individuals and families with dignity and respect. I am especially proud of our talented and dedicated USDA Food and Nutrition Service staff who work tirelessly to provide life-sustaining resources to all those impacted by Hurricane Katrina." [an error occurred while processing this directive]

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