Major battles appear to be breaking out in both the House and Senate over whether food stamp administrative reimbursements to states will be capped in order to fund child welfare, agricultural research, crop insurance commissions, or none of the above.
For years, states have classified each welfare, food stamp and Medicaid recipient as "primarily" the recipient of one of the programs, and received a federal payment of 50 percent of the administrative costs of processing that person's eligibility for benefits. But because last year's welfare reform bill capped the administrative payments to states for basic welfare, the states, according to some members of Congress, have reclassified benefit recipients as "primarily" food stamp or Medicaid recipients in order to get more federal money, causing estimates of food stamp administrative costs to go up.
Pressed by budget concerns, members have seen the food stamp and Medicaid reimbursement accounts as sources of funds for other programs, and those conflicts appear to be coming to a head.
Sens. John Chafee, R-R.I., and Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., have introduced a bill to provide financial incentives to encourage people to adopt children. The proposal is estimated to cost $2.4 billion over five years, part of which would come from an offset in the food stamp and Medicaid reimbursements.
In late July, the Senate Agriculture Committee unanimously passed an agricultural research bill that included a new $980 billion competitive grants program funded mostly through a food stamp offset.
Among the committee members who voted for the agriculture research bill were Sens. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and Mary Landrieu, D-La., both of whom are cosponsors of the Chafee-Rockefeller bill.
A Senate Agriculture staffer said that the Chafee-Rockefeller measure is considered so threatening to the agriculture research competitive grants program that a staff meeting is planned later this week to discuss it.
House Agriculture ranking member Charles Stenholm, D-Texas, also proposed capping food stamp administrative funds in order to pay for higher commissions for crop insurance companies and agents.
The House Agriculture Committee rejected that idea because the CBO had ruled that changing the rules on food stamp administration would constitute a technical unfunded mandate.
Appropriators resolved the crop insurance issue for FY98 by taking money from other programs.
But a Stenholm aide Monday told CongressDaily Stenholm is still interested in using the food stamp money to provide long term funding for the crop insurance commissions.
Meanwhile, House Agriculture Forestry, Resource Conservation, and Research Subcommittee Chairman Larry Combest, R-Texas, has scheduled a markup Thursday of a bill to reauthorize agricultural research programs through 2002.
But the bill does not include any new competitive grants research program, even though land grant colleges and agribusiness have been lobbying for it.
A key House Republican staffer said, "We would like to spend more money on research but that will be a full committee question."
Recalling Stenholm's bill to use the food stamp money for crop insurance, the aide added that he did not know whether the committee would provide more money for agriculture research.
If the committee gets "access to the money, [research] isn't the only thing people have needs to spend money on," the aide said.
The National Governors' Association, the American Public Welfare Association and the National Conference of State Legislatures have opposed all bills that would take food stamp and Medicaid administrative monies for other purposes.
An American Public Welfare Association staffer said that the food stamp and Medicaid programs are still federally directed and that administrative requirements have increased, rather than decreased, since welfare reform.
In addition, the staffer noted, as people go off welfare and often get low paying jobs, they often become "food stamp only" beneficiaries, which justifies their reclassification.
Agriculture Secretary Glickman told CongressDaily in an interview last month that he had "real problems" with both the food stamp and computer offsets targeted for the agriculture research bill.
If there are cuts in the food stamp administrative account, that money should go for other nutrition programs, Glickman said.
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