Where do food stamps come from?

They come from taxpayers—certainly not from family farms. Yet the “farm” bill, a recurring subsidy-fest in Congress, is actually 80 percent food stamps and other government nutrition programs.

Cartoon by Glenn Foden

Tweet this

The food stamps sweeten the farm deal for lawmakers, who admit that the combination works for their political purposes. As Heritage experts Daren Bakst and Diane Katz explain:

The food stamp portion creates a reason for urban representatives to support farm subsidies, and for farm-state lawmakers to support food stamps.

Talk of de-politicizing agriculture programs and welfare policy is met with stiff resistance. For example, Senator Thad Cochran (R–MS), ranking Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee, recently told the North American Agricultural Journalists group that food stamps should continue to be included in the farm bill “purely from a political perspective. It helps get the farm bill passed.”

Food stamps are there to help “get the farm bill passed.” And the relation of the rest of the farm bill to farming is also questionable. Bakst and Katz note that “Congress has expanded the farm bill over time into a costly compilation of disparate programs. Along with agriculture and food stamps, the legislation includes dozens of forestry, conservation, energy, and rural development programs.”

It has become the norm that Congress lumps billions—even trillions—of dollars in taxpayer-funded programs together into huge bills. This allows them to sneak in plenty of special-interest pork.

Each of these programs deserves to be evaluated on its own, and taxpayers deserve transparency from Congress about how it plans to spend our money.

For example, food stamps are a massive program that needs a careful look. Food stamp spending has doubled under the Obama Administration, and participation is at historic highs. Recruiters hold bingo games and other “parties” to try to get more people on the food stamp rolls.

Farm commodity programs are also a major concern and in dire need of reform. Congress may eliminate the egregious direct payment program, which pays farmers for doing nothing. However, instead of stopping there, both the House and Senate farm bills would replace direct payments with programs that could wind up being even costlier.

Food stamps and farming ultimately have to do with food, but that’s about all they have in common. Making the farm bill 80 percent food stamps just doesn’t make sense.

LEARN MORE:

Fact Sheet >> Farm Bill: Ripe for Reform

Read the Morning Bell and more en español every day at Heritage Libertad.

Quick Hits:

• Moore, Oklahoma, was devastated by a tornado yesterday that killed at least 91 people and injured hundreds more.
• The labor union representing those who approve immigration applications is speaking out against the Gang of Eight immigration bill, saying it would make the current system “worse.”
• The U.S. has announced it will sign the U.N.’s Arms Trade Treaty. Heritage’s Ted Bromund explains why this would be a terrible decision.
• A high school senior has invented a device that can charge a cell phone in 20 to 30 seconds.
• Are you a veteran looking for a community? Or are you looking for a way to thank our veterans? Here are some places you can get plugged in.

The post Morning Bell: A Bumper Crop of Food Stamps appeared first on The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation.

Sumon Yusuf/Polaris/Newscom

Since late last year, workers in Bangladesh have been beset by tragedy after tragedy. First there was a factory fire that killed over 100 garment workers in November. Then last month a garment complex collapsed, killing over 1,000 people.

Now, as if to add insult to injury, the Obama Administration is threatening to raise U.S. tariffs on products that we buy from Bangladesh. In a proposed regulation, the U.S. Trade Representative, based on input from the AFL-CIO, is suggesting tariffs be increased on imported goods from Bangladesh to punish the country for its poor labor practices. Bangladesh currently enjoys duty-free tariffs on some items under the General System of Preference (GSP), which grants tariff breaks to poor developing countries in order to encourage economic development.

This is bad policy. GSP imports from Bangladesh account for less than 1 percent of all imports from Bangladesh. In addition, GSPs for Bangladesh cover mostly agricultural goods. This will hurt the country’s most vulnerable by limiting farmers’ access to U.S. to markets. Rural Bangladeshis earn 57 percent less than their urban counterparts, and $10 per month less than the soon to be increased minimum wage of $38 per month.

Any tariff increases in general would be deleterious to the Bangladeshi economy. Tariffs increase the cost of exporting, ultimately eliminating jobs. This would put the very workers U.S. lawmakers are trying to protect out of jobs and make needed regulatory improvements even less likely.

These tragedies are horrific, but let’s not add insult to injury by taking away jobs from Bangladesh’s most vulnerable.

The post President Obama, Bangladesh Has Faced Enough Tragedy, Don’t Take Away Jobs, Too appeared first on The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation.

Sojka Libor/ZUMA Press/Newscom

Germany is moving closer to supporting a move by the European Union (EU) to list Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, according to news sources. If true, this is a welcome development. German support for listing Hezbollah as a terrorist organization would help rectify the glaring and inexcusable omission by other European countries that fail to name Hezbollah for what it is.

In March, a spokesman for Germany’s Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich stated that the minister supports listing Hezbollah as a terrorist organization in the EU. However, Friedrich’s comments contained the caveat that such a move would be dependent on compelling evidence of Hezbollah’s guilt in a July 2012 bus bombing in Burgas, Bulgaria, which killed five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver.

But there is already plenty of evidence.

In February, Bulgarian authorities announced the findings of a six-month-long investigation into the terror attack that found “obvious links” between the bombing and Hezbollah. In April, the European Police Office (EUROPOL) issued a statement that could be viewed as an endorsement of the Bulgarian findings, saying “indications suggest possible links” between the Burgas bombings and Hezbollah. What further compelling evidence Friedrich believes necessary is not clear.

What is certain is that due to the need for consensus, the EU is unlikely to act quickly on listing Hezbollah as a terrorist group. Sovereign nations such as Germany have the legal ability and moral responsibility to act on their own as the EU continues to drag its feet on the issue of Hezbollah. As research by The Heritage Foundation recently pointed out:

European countries can pull their heads out of the sand and designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization without waiting for the EU to do so. This would enable a long-overdue crackdown on the group’s fundraising, recruitment, and operational networks that would make the world safer for Europeans and Americans while helping to stabilize the volatile Middle East.

Germany would be a good place to start. While Hezbollah is active throughout Europe, Germany is home to the most active members.

Hezbollah is clearly and unabashedly a terrorist organization. Its military wing continues to carry out terror attacks across the globe, including on European soil, which endanger innocent civilians. Their political wing continues to raise money and seek sympathetic followers. It’s high time for Europe and the individual countries within Europe to act.

The post Germany Moves Closer to Listing Hezbollah a Terrorist Organization appeared first on The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation.

PASCAL SAURA/AFP/Getty Images/Newscom

Last Wednesday, off the coast of Kauai, Hawaii, the Navy cruiser USS Lake Erie conducted a successful test of the next-generation missile defense weapon, engaging and destroying a dummy target warhead that had separated from a short-range attacking rocket.

The Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) is designed to seek and kill both attacking rockets and the warheads they carry. This next generation of the SM-3 interceptor is called the Block IB (SM-3 Block IB).

This is the third successful intercept test of the cutting-edge interceptor since its first test resulted in a failure to destroy the target on September 1, 2011. With this most recent test, the SM-3 Block IB program is now on track to provide a key element of the second phase of the Administration’s Phased Adaptive Approach (PAA) missile defense program.

This second phase includes basing the SM-3 Block IB interceptors on both Navy ships and on land in Romania by 2015. These three successful tests have put the SM-3 Block IB program back on track to meeting the 2015 deadline.

However, sequestration could result in the outright cancellation of the European element of the PAA. This would be a major setback.

There are two critical lessons stemming from the combination of the three successful SM-3 Block IB interceptor tests and the failure in September 2001. First, a failure to achieve an intercept can potentially teach as much as a successful one. In this case, the proper response is to move forward with follow-on tests and not back off the program.

The second lesson is that it is wise to pursue a development program for next-generation military technology with a considerable degree of concurrency—that is, the stages of development should be pursued in an overlapping fashion rather than sequentially.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has long argued against concurrency, which it believes involves too much risk. But a strict interpretation of the GAO recommendation for avoiding concurrency, in the case of the SM-3 Block IB program, could easily have resulted in a failure to meet the 2015 deadline and needlessly weaken our defensive capability.

The current status of the SM-3 Block IB development program demonstrates that the GAO is underplaying the cost of pursuing military technology programs in a strictly sequential fashion. Accordingly, other missile defense development programs should pursue concurrency.

The post Missile Defense: Another Successful U.S. Test appeared first on The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation.

Newscom

Advocates of the Obamacare Medicaid expansion have produced a number of studies in various states that project significant economic benefits if states adopt the expansion. However, most of those studies omit one or more key factors that, when included, make expansion scenarios look considerably less rosy.

• Job creation. Many state-level studies project that adopting the Medicaid expansion will generate new jobs and other favorable economic effects. However, those studies don’t measure the countervailing economic drag that will result from funding the expansion through increased taxation and borrowing. That drag will come both locally—from increased state taxes to pay the state’s share of expansion costs as well as the share of Obamacare’s new federal taxes paid by individuals and businesses in the state—and nationally from increased federal taxes in all the other states and increased federal borrowing.
• State savings. The increased federal contribution percentage for the expansion is stepped down in future years. That means that, over time, state costs grow faster than state savings in all but a handful of states. Thus, even if a state is projected to achieve significant savings in the first few years, within ten years the trend lines for projected cost versus projected spending cross. From that point on the expansion becomes an ever-growing net fiscal burden on the state. Studies that use a budget window of less than 10 years, or provide only aggregated multi-year estimates obscure the reality that the fiscal trends are unfavorable to states. Indeed, even a 10-year window doesn’t fully capture the long-term costs to states. Studies that cut the budget projection window to as little as five years, or even eight years, produce a highly distorted picture of the true costs to states.
• State tax revenues. Many of the studies projecting increased state tax revenues from the expansion do not subtract from the new federal funds the portion that will replace existing state spending. That amount represents a cost shift from the state to the federal government. As such, it is the source of all of a state’s “savings,” but it will generate neither new economic activity nor new state tax revenue. In addition, the ability of states to continue using “provider tax” schemes to draw down additional federal funding is highly questionable. Should the federal government disallow more of those claims, the share of federal funding for the state’s Medicaid program would decline.

Advocates of the Medicaid expansion like to claim that states would be turning down “free money” if they don’t agree to expand their program. However, there is no such thing as “free money.” Rather, it really is “hidden cost” money. It is only by not looking at all the costs that the illusion is created that the money is “free.”

The post Information Missing from Studies on the “Benefits” of State Medicaid Expansion appeared first on The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation.

Kevin Dietsch/UPI/Newscom

Supporters of the Gang of Eight immigration bill argue they want to make immigrating legally simpler, but their bill would make the H-1B system for highly skilled workers almost unworkable.

H-1B visas allow U.S. companies to hire highly educated foreign workers for occupations requiring specialized skills and knowledge. Employers must pay H-1B workers the “prevailing wage” and certify that their employment will not adversely affect other employees. This allows companies to expand and create jobs more for American workers as well.

Section 4211 of the Gang of Eight bill guts the H-1B program by imposing heavy new restrictions. It would force employers using H-1B visas to:

• Pay higher wages to most H-1B employees than to U.S. workers;
• Advertise the job for at least 30 days in a Department of Labor online database;
• Offer the job to any “equally or better qualified” American who applies;
• Not displace any of their U.S. employees for a six-month window surrounding the H-1B visa application unless they can show that they have not decreased the number of workers in the same “job zone” for the past year; and
• Follow even stricter regulations if more than 15 percent of their workforce uses the program.

Forcing businesses to pay H-1B workers above-market wages is bad enough. The other restrictions would create a bureaucratic nightmare for employers and put them in legal jeopardy. For instance, how can an employer prove that it has offered the job to all “equally qualified” American applicants except by choosing them over the H-1B worker? Qualifications are inherently subjective. They depend on a business’s unique needs and a worker’s unique skills. Nonetheless, employers would have to objectively prove—according to the Department of Labor’s standards—that each H-1B hire had better qualifications than every rejected American applicant.

The “non-displacement” requirement forces H-1B employers to prove that each employee who quit was not effectively discharged and that performance problems fully justified any layoffs. Again, the Department of Labor would establish the standards for evaluating such personnel actions.

The government lacks the information necessary to make these subjective judgments. Every business with H-1B employees would risk legal liability. Abusive government agents could easily argue that an American worker had the same qualifications as a foreign applicant and levy stiff fines. The IRS scandal demonstrates why businesses do not trust the government not to abuse such authority.

Rather than face this legal uncertainty and endure restrictions on their personnel actions, many employers would stop using the H-1B program altogether. This happened when Congress applied similar “recruitment and non-displacement” requirements to financial institutions that received bailout funds. Rather than comply, the affected businesses dropped out of the H-1B program and rescinded existing job offers.

The H-1B program allows companies to fill vital highly skilled positions—and keep their operations in America. It benefits American workers and businesses. Congress should not make the H-1B system for highly skilled immigrants nearly unmanageable.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post did not clarify that this post refers only to the H-1B visa system, not to other systems for highly skilled immigration.

The post Immigration: Gang of Eight Would Make H-1B Program Unworkable appeared first on The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation.

Proposed changes to food aid programs would allow U.S. tax dollars to feed more people at a lower cost.

Representatives Ed Royce (R–CA) and Karen Bass (D–CA) recently proposed legislation that would remove counter-productive restrictions on the use of food-aid dollars while ending a wasteful process known as “monetization.”

Monetization occurs when the government donates U.S. food to charities instead of giving them dollars. These charitable organizations then sell the food in other countries and use the proceeds to fund development-related activities. The Government Accountability Office found that monetization programs wasted $219 million over a three-year period that otherwise could have been used to fight hunger or returned to taxpayers.

Royce and Bass’s bill would also remove mandates that force aid dollars to be used to purchase U.S.-grown food and shipped on U.S. vessels, even when there are more cost-efficient options available.

The legislation builds on a more modest proposal by the Obama Administration to modernize U.S. food aid programs and includes specific policy reforms that The Heritage Foundation has previously recommended.

Based on Obama Administration estimates, the proposal would enable the same funding to benefit 2 million to 4 million additional people around the world. Royce and Bass would take that a step further by removing entirely the legislative restrictions that increase costs and reduce the effectiveness of U.S. food assistance.

U.S. special interest groups whose funding might be threatened have expressed opposition even to the Administration’s modest reform proposals. But nothing the reforms suggested by the Obama Administration or Royce and Bass would prevent U.S. aid dollars from being spent on U.S. food and shipped on U.S. vessels, as long as that is the most affordable and best way to get food to the people who need it.

Freeing aid dollars to be used more efficiently is a bipartisan reform that Americans should embrace.

The post Getting More Bang for the Buck from Food Aid appeared first on The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation.

“Veterans and their families are the single greatest natural resource this country has.” – James Carafano

Veterans are highly skilled, dedicated individuals who bring to the civilian workforce those same qualities. However, transitioning from the battlefield to civilian life can be difficult. The panel of veterans and philanthropists at Heritage’s Protect America Month event, “Serving Those Who Serve,” gave some insight on how communities can help.

Different veterans need different kinds of help. Some have serious physical injuries, others have psychological wounds. Some have post-traumatic stress disorder, others have traumatic brain injuries. Some families have been destabilized through one member’s military service.

Colonel Lettie Bien, representative of the Fisher House, noted that the female veteran population is growing and widely misunderstood. Women returning from service have different needs than men, including different health and family issues.

Devin Holmes, founder and CEO of Warrior Gateway, explained that one of the most difficult aspects of supporting veterans is simply finding them. Many return from service and don’t recognize the community they return to. They are overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of organizations wanting to help them, so many don’t seek help at all. Warrior Gateway helps veterans find assistance for their specific needs through local resources, whether it’s counseling, physical therapy, or housing.

For wounded veterans, returning to civilian life may seem overwhelming. Engaging in physical activity, which veterans are very familiar with, may give them the courage to take the first steps. Organizations like Team River Runner and Warriors and Quiet Waters help wounded warriors begin their transition back to civilian life with kayaking and fly fishing, respectively. Organizations like these that cater specifically to the families of service members and veterans are especially important.

The Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS) provides grief and trauma resources to the families of those who made the greatest sacrifice. ThanksUSA helps families by “providing need-based college, technical and vocational school scholarships for their children and spouses.” ThanksUSA’s founder, B. Robert Okun, said that supporting “the family structure back home” is a top issue for service members, and education is an important readiness and retention issue.

One organization, Esprit de Corps, has the mission of educating individuals and other organizations on how to best help veterans. Veteran Nation is their documentary film on the “experience of how America has treated our veterans and their families from Bunker Hill to Baghdad; the challenges facing this generation; and how the American people can best serve those who served.”

Every generation has a community of veterans that made sacrifices to provide for the common defense. The communities they return to should show their gratitude by providing them the best help possible. A few long established organizations that help veterans include The American Legion, Red Cross, Salvation Army, and Easter Seals. These groups and others like them welcome help from general and skilled volunteers, as well as donations.

To all Americans who have served our country, thank you.

Genevieve Syverson is currently a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation. For more information on interning at Heritage, please click here.

The post Veterans Organizations: Serving Those Who Serve appeared first on The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation.

NARONG SANGNAK/EPA/Newscom

President Obama’s meeting with Burma’s President Thein Sein at the White House today is a stark reminder of how far the Administration has come on Burma policy.

In initiating the annual process for renewal of the ban on Burmese imports last week, Representative Joseph Crowley (D–NY) reiterated his desire that the Administration “not waver” from an “action-for-action” policy that demands concrete political reforms in return for easing of U.S. sanctions.

It’s a justifiable and admirable concern. The problem is that, despite the voices of Congressman Crowley—a longtime leader in defense of human rights in Burma—the co-sponsor of the ban extension, Representative Peter King (R–NY), and an emerging generation of leaders on this issue led by Congressman Trent Franks (R–AZ), “action for action” is a thing of the past.

The Administration, in consultation with congressional leadership, has moved from “action for action” to “action and hope for the best.” It has removed, suspended, or otherwise eased sanctions on Burma across the board. But instead of calibrating these rewards in response to actual reforms, in an effort to impact Burma’s domestic political balance, it has taken to preemptively rewarding the reformers themselves.

This makes subjective judgments about personalities and Burmese politics more important than developments on the ground. In fact, taken to its logical conclusion, a policy focused on political dynamics effectively divorces policy from performance. What matters most in such an approach—even if reforms stall or reverse—is support for the good guys and the ability of our diplomats to recognize them.

The renewal of import restrictions—if it proceeds (there are indications from the Senate that it may not)—is inoperative. There is an understanding between Congress and the Administration that the restrictions on imports be waived. They want to do away with the ban but in a way that theoretically gives the Administration the authority to re-impose it. Theoretically, because it is not clear at all what would constitute cause for re-imposition. If the ban is not extended by Congress, re-imposition becomes even more theoretical.

The Administration, congressional leadership, and former stalwart defenders of liberty in Burma moved too quickly to reach consensus on relaxing this sanction and others, including the investment ban, which has proceeded under a similar agreement. Yet, even in the face of reports of what Human Rights Watch calls “ethnic cleansing,” the Administration is looking to up the ante. Formal notification has been given to make Burma a beneficiary of tariff breaks under the Generalized System of Preferences program. The Administration has also initiated discussions with Congress on opening channels of military-to-military engagement and assistance.

It is here, military-to-military relations, where Congress may finally draw the line. The pushback on the Administration’s plans has been stronger than expected, and efforts are underway in both houses to legally prevent or severely condition any engagement of the Burmese military.

Given growing congressional resistance to ever deepening engagement with Burma, it is possible that Thein Sein’s visit to Washington will mark the peak of “action and hope for the best.” The Administration has not gotten to this point of accommodation with the regime in Burma on its own. It will take robust congressional leadership to help it acknowledge its shortcomings and craft a policy more responsive to the situation on the ground.

The post Administration Burma Policy: Lift Sanctions, Ask Questions Later appeared first on The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation.

Lawful immigration can bring important economic and cultural benefits both to the United States and to the immigrants. Americans rightly live and celebrate the values of America, including limited government, personal liberty, and free enterprise, and beckon others to join us. We are united by belief in our founding documents and our creed that all men are created equal. As Ronald Reagan said, “The immigrants who have so enriched America include people from every race, creed, and ethnic background.”

While we welcome those who want to come here, we are a nation of laws and the rule of law requires fair, firm, and consistent enforcement. Immigration is no exception and in fact is critically important, because newcomers need to see the principle in action from their first day in America. Those who enter legally by our slow and bureaucratic system need to be rewarded, not left wondering whether they should have entered or stayed illegally and waited for amnesty.

In addressing immigration, our government should start with keeping the promises they made when they granted amnesty “for only this one time” in 1986. First, they must secure the border. Then they should enforce our laws by imposing stiff fines on those who hire illegal immigrants. These steps are supported by supermajorities of the American people.

After that, Congress should move to fix our slow, broken lawful immigration system. Individual bills addressing these specific problems step-by-step are good for the country because they are simple, clear, and transparent. They make it possible to get legislative victories where we can agree and make it hard to hide loopholes or sweetheart deals for special interests. They can build trust that government is working for the people.

Unfortunately, Congress is moving ahead with a huge, complex, and comprehensive bill that will include amnesty for those who have broken our immigration laws. And in a time of massive and increasing debt, we know that the bill will end up costing taxpayers trillions of dollars. After a short time, millions of illegal immigrants will have access to the full panoply of bloated means-tested welfare programs and qualify for overburdened entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.

Instead, Congress should proceed step-by-step: border security, then workplace enforcement, and then fixing our broken legal immigration system. These steps will fulfill past promises and benefit America economically while not adding the unnecessary fiscal costs of amnesty.

Read the Morning Bell and more en español every day at Heritage Libertad.

Quick Hits:

• The IRS had a plan to break the news of its targeting of conservative groups and planted a question to get the story going.
• Chinese hackers continue to attack U.S. cyber-targets.
• North Korea has fired six test missiles in the past three days.
• Iran says it has executed two “spies” working for the U.S. and Israel.
• The U.S. hit the debt ceiling again over the weekend.

The post Morning Bell: Immigration Reform Should Strengthen, Not Cost, America appeared first on The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation.