Climate Progress, Sept. 23, 2013
By Katie Valentine
The traditional environmental movement has a diversity problem.
That’s according to Van Jones, founder of Green for All and environmental and civil rights advocate. But Jones says it’s not just that the staffs of many large, mainstream environmental organizations have been historically mostly white — it’s that most of the smaller environmental justice groups are getting a fraction of the funding that the big groups receive.
Jones says for the environmental movement as a whole to succeed, that needs to change. Environmental justice groups are the ones serving populations that are often most vulnerable to climate change and affected most by pollution — Americans who are low income, live in cities and are often people of color.
“The mainstream donors and environmental organizations could be strengthened just by recognizing the other ‘environmentalisms’ that are already existing and flourishing outside their purview,” Jones said.
These environmental justice groups work on a smaller scale than the major mainstream groups like the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense Fund — they’re groups like the Bus Riders Union in Los Angeles and West Harlem Environmental Action (WE ACT) in New York City, groups that are working towards improving the environmental health of their communities. Danielle Deane, Energy and Environment Program Director at the Joint Center, said the groups don’t always get the credit they deserve for their support of environmental issues.
“For whatever reason, often the innovation, the hard work by community leaders that’s happening to help prepare their cities as they expect extreme weather events like Sandy, often those leaders don’t get the level of attention they deserve even though they’ve been working on some of these issues for decades,” she explained. “I think that’s slowly changing, but I think there’s a lot more activity by a wide range of folks that isn’t yet getting its due.”
One of the biggest reasons for that, as Jones said, is the funding gap that exists between the small-scale environmental justice groups and the large, mainstream environmental organizations. A recent report from the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy found from 2007 to 2009, just 15 percent of environmental grants went towards benefiting marginalized communities, and only 11 percent went towards advancing “social justice” strategies.
The Washington Post investigated the issue in March and found that environmental justice-focused organizations operate “on shoestring budgets.” In fact, according to the Post, a 2001 report found the environmental justice movement gets just 5 percent of the conservation funding from foundations, with mainstream environmental groups getting the rest.
Jones said diversifying the donor lists of foundations that usually give to environmental groups would help black Americans in particular make their voices heard in the environmental movement. Polls show that, as a group, black Americans support environmental and climate change specific regulations as much or more than white Americans do. A 2010 poll from the Joint Center found black Americans in four swing states supported action on climate change and a solid majority of respondents said they wanted the U.S. Senate to pass legislation that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions before the 2012 election. The poll also found a majority of respondents said they would be willing to pay up to $10 per month more in electric rates if the extra charge if it meant climate change was being addressed, and more than 25 percent said they would pay an additional $25 per month.
A Yale poll from 2010 yielded similar results: it found Hispanics, African Americans and people of other races and ethnicities were “often the strongest supporters of climate and energy policies and were also more likely to support these policies even if they incurred greater cost.” It also found 89 percent of black respondents said they would strongly or somewhat support regulating carbon as a pollutant, compared to 78 percent of white Americans.
“I think there’s always been way more support in the black community for climate solutions and environmental solutions than we have credit for,” Jones said. “Some affluent white communities are more vocal and maybe have more intensity, and also more resources to single this one issue out, but the polling data’s pretty clear that African Americans are among the most supportive of environmental regulation and climate solutions.”
Deane agrees. She said black Americans have reason to care about the environment, because they’re one of the groups most affected by its health. A 2008 study found 71 percent of black Americans live in counties in violation of federal air pollution standards, compared to 58 percent of white Americans. That increased exposure to pollution contributes significantly to the high rate of asthma in the community — black children are twice as likely to have asthma as white children, and overall, black Americans have a 36 percent higher rate of asthma than whites. In addition, according to the 2008 report, 78 percent of black Americans live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant, compared to 56 percent of non-Hispanic whites. Blacks are also 52 percent more likely to live in urban heat islands than whites, which makes them more vulnerable to heat waves.
“I think there’s still a disconnect where the public perception of who really cares about environmental issues and who wants action on climate — a disconnect between what’s happening on the ground and public perception, ” Deane said. “Because African Americans know they tend to suffer disproportionately from pollution, you tend to see high levels of support for action to make sure companies all have to meet higher standards, but often when you see environmentalists you tend to see folks that are not necessarily as diverse as what we know and what we see on the ground.”
Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), co-chair of the Congressional Black Caucus’s Energy, Environment and Agriculture Taskforce, says fighting for environmental causes is about much more than protecting natural resources — to her, environmental issues are civil rights issues. Just recently in her own district of Houston, she helped fight against a grease recycling plant that was proposed for a residential neighborhood.
“I’ve found the black community to be very well informed about environmental issues, and that’s because they live them every day,” she said. “One of my minority neighborhoods had to fight against a cement factory. Another had to fight against a waste facility in their community. So most African Americans know what it is to try to keep their neighborhood well. That makes them more sensitive, it makes their members more in tune.”
Jackson Lee says environmental justice weaves into all the decisions the CBC makes. According the League of Conservation Voter’s annual environmental scorecard, the lifetime environmental voting record of the current members of the CBC is 86 percent — meaning they voted in favor of environmental issues 86 percent of the time. And in 2009, Jones said, every member of the CBC except one — Rep. Artur Davis (R-AL) — voted in favor of the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill, making the CBC one of the “greenest” caucuses of the last Congress.
Jones said there’s long been tension between mainstream environmental groups and environmental justice organizations. Mainstream groups can feel like they’re unfairly being called racist and that claims of lack of support for environmental justice groups can be unfounded, and environmental justice groups often are jealous of the publicity and funding the mainstream groups get and wary to reach out to them for fear of being rejected. But the onus to make the change, he said, isn’t on the environmental justice groups — it’s the donors and foundations who need to expand who they send their money to, and mainstream environmental groups have the power to help them do that.
“If you go to Detroit, you will find lots of community gardening going on, lots of community cleanup going on, lots of small-scale manufacturing going on. None of this is being directed by any mainstream environmental group — these are organic, well-considered responses from people who are trying to make their lives better,” Jones said. “Those people should be called environmentalists as much as anybody who is standing up for endangered species.”
Andrew Breiner contributed the graphics to this piece.
Green energy pays for itself in lives saved from smog
New Scientist, Sept. 22, 2013
By Michael Marshall
Switching to clean energy might seem like the expensive option, but it would pay for itself almost immediately, according to a new analysis. The reason? Reducing our reliance on fossil fuels will cut air pollution, saving lives and therefore money.
By 2050, 1.3 million early deaths could be avoided every year. From estimates of how much society values a human life, researchers deduce that the new energy supplies should be worth the cost.
The conclusion offers a strong incentive to countries to start cutting back on fossil fuels as soon as possible. It also offers support for the US Environmental Protection Agency, which on Friday proposed limiting carbon dioxide emissions from new coal-fired and gas-fired power plants to 499 kilograms [1100 pounds] per megawatt-hour of electricity generated. (On average, a typical coal-fired power station in the US emits 940 of CO2 kilograms [2072 pounds] per megawatt-hour.)
“The work strengthens the case for these new regulations by pointing out the air quality and health benefits,” says Jason West at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who led the analysis.
Smog, smog everywhere
As well as releasing greenhouse gases that warm the planet, burning fossil fuels gives off large quantities of polluting chemicals. These can build up into dense smogs, like the one that smothered China’s capital Beijing in January. Such smog is a major public health hazard. West estimates that worldwide, air pollution kills over 2 million people annually.
Now West and colleagues have estimated how much air pollution would be reduced if humanity slashed its fossil fuel use. The team simulated global air pollution in 2030, 2050 and 2100, using two scenarios: one in which humanity cuts its greenhouse gas emissions fairly quickly, and a similar scenario with no global climate policy. Then, using the patterns of global air pollution, they calculated how many people would die as a result of smog, using real epidemiological data as a guide.
In each of the three future years selected, cutting fossil fuels saved lives compared with a control scenario. In 2030, 0.5 million premature deaths per year were avoided, and this rose to 2.2 million in 2100. Keeping these extra people alive means that they can work and continue to contribute to society.
Statistical life
West’s team estimated this economic benefit using a statistic called the Value of Statistical Life. This measures how much value society puts on a person’s life, for instance, by looking at how much people demand to be paid before risking their life.
The team found that for every tonne of CO2 not emitted, the average global benefit at any one time was between $50 and $380 depending on where you are in the world. In 2030 and 2050, these benefits outweighed the cost of cutting emissions, which was less than $100 per tonne of CO2. The benefits were less clear by 2100, because by then the easiest reductions had already been achieved so any further cuts were more expensive, at around $300 per tonne. But even then, “the benefits are of the same order as the costs,” says West.
The calculations do not include pollution’s effects on children or the costs of caring for people suffering from pollution-related disease, so the economic benefits may be underestimated.
Short-term gains
If the calculations stand up, the gains from cutting air pollution are greater than expected, says Gregory Nemet at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Pollution will only fall if we cut greenhouse gas emissions in the right way, cautions Martin Williams of Kings College London. For instance, burning biomass could be very polluting if done carelessly. “Uncontrolled and inefficient combustion of wood can lead to the emission of lots of particles.”
Even if greenhouse gases are cut, other benefits, like reducing extreme weather events, will not become apparent until the end of the century, according to a recent study by Nigel Arnell at the University of Reading in the UK. That gives politicians a reason to prevaricate.
But the drop in air pollution, and its consequences, changes that equation. “This gives us a benefit that’s immediate,” says West, giving an incentive to act now.
Journal reference: Nature Climate Change, DOI: 10.1038/nclimate2009
The Killing of Jonathan Ferrell in Context
The Atlantic, Sept. 24, 2013
By Ta-Nehisi Coates
If I sounded a bit glum and fatalistic in my post on the killing of Jonathan Ferrell, and if I sounded glum and fatalistic in my postings on Trayvon Martin, and if I generally have sounded glum and fatalistic period, you can blame charts like this one. Again, this is from Patrick Sharkey’s research in his book Stuck In Place. I would go so far as to call it essential in understanding the profound lack of progress we’ve seen, over the last forty years, in our efforts to forge an integrated society.
Much of Sharkey’s data is pulled from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The PSID is remarkable in that it allows you to look at people across generations. Or for now, just one generation because the PSID started in the late 60s.
Above you see a chart look at blacks and whites born in poor and affluent neighborhoods, and what happened to them across a generation. The chart then shows what percentage of each group’s families remained in poor neighborhoods, and which group’ did not. It also shows what percent of each group’s families born into affluent neighborhoods were able to remain there, and what percent of each group’s families were not.
As you can see the results are glum. Put simply if you are black and grew up around poverty, your children probably grew up the same way. If you are white and grew up around poverty, your children probably did better. If you are black and grew up around affluence, your children probably didn’t. If you are white and grew up around affluence, your child probably did.
When I talk about terms like “poor” and “middle class” and “elite” not translating when we compare blacks and whites, this is what I mean. Black people living around affluence are not white people living around affluence with a tan. Their lives are different. The prospects of their children are worse, and their presence on the East Side tends to be transient.
The fact of a dual-society has implications beyond the dollar signs. Toleration of black disadvantage, in a world where that disadvantage is rarely forthrightly explained, leads to the toleration of magic. This is true many times over when you consider that America was founded on the magical thinking of white supremacy. Put differently, if a society has a history of believing that black people are less than human, and yet repeatedly sees black people living in conditions unlike other humans in that society, the original belief is reified.
And we know this. Beryl Satter documents in her book, Family Properties, how the racist practice of redlining black people did not just rob black people of wealth, it reinforced racist beliefs already present. Because I am black, my interest rates and my payments are higher than yours. Because my payments are higher I can not keep up my property as well as you. Because my payments are higher, I work a second job and I am not around to supervise my kids. You don’t ever see the absurd contract on my house. But you do see my gutters falling off. You see my kids out past the hour of streetlights. No one told you about redlining. But many people told you that I am lazy and prone to criminality. You have been told this since somewhere around the 18th century. And now you see that when I move next door, property values dip, and the neighborhood becomes a ghetto.
Where science is concealed, magic reigns. And you will be forgiven for believing that the fact of the ghetto, is the fact of my lesser humanity. And with that lessened humanity, with all the requisite stereotypes, comes an entire belief system that tolerates the killing of Trayvon Martin by a man who then tours the factory where the weapon he used to slaughter a child was made.
I can only yell so loud when a jury comes back with a verdict we do not like. I can only yell so loud when the police act on magic. The society believes in magic. The institutions reflect this belief. Whoso tolerates a dual-society, necessarily tolerates the killing of Jonathan Ferrell. I see no evidence that the dual-society, nor its toleration, are in decline. Trayvon Martin will happen again. George Zimmerman will be innocent again. Fools will blame hip-hop again. Racists will discover Chicago again. And we will be back in the streets demanding a change in some law which is but the thin branch of a problem, that extends down into our country’s deepest roots.
Again.
Latinos Are Ready to Lead on Climate Change
Global Possibilities, Sept. 24, 2013
By Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva
This week the Environmental Protection Agency took a critical step to reduce carbon pollution, one of the biggest (and still growing) causes of climate change. The EPA’s rule limiting emissions from new coal plants is the first step in President Obama’s plan to tackle what has truly become a global crisis. I agree with him that we can’t wait any longer. We’re seeing record-breaking storms and severe weather around the country and the rest of the world. We can’t sit back and wait any longer.
If it hasn’t already, climate change will impact everyone soon regardless of who they are, where they live or how much money they have. The physical and health consequences will be especially severe for children, the elderly, people with lower incomes, and people who work outdoors in industries like agricultural and construction.
American Latinos will be among the most strongly affected. We have a personal as well as a collective national stake in limiting climate change. It’s time for us to take the lead.
Since I was first elected to Congress in 2002, I’ve worked to protect the Southern Arizona communities I represent from excessive pollution. I’ve also worked to protect the Grand Canyon and our many other ecological and historical treasures. Protecting people and the great outdoors are two sides of the same coin, and each benefits the other. I’ve introduced legislation to clean up our public lands and put young people to work at the same time; to allow our public schools to upgrade their facilities to make them more energy efficient and lower their electricity bills; and to give our community college students workforce training and education in sustainable energy industries, just to name a few.
We need these kinds of approaches because climate change is intensifying extreme weather events that threaten communities across the country. Last year Arizonans endured record-breaking heat in 11 counties, surpassing thirty-five separate extreme heat records. A total of 64 large wildfires put Arizonans’ homes and health at risk. We all saw the devastation and tragic deaths caused by the recent Yarnell Fire. Today our neighbors in Colorado are working to recover from historic floods.
This is not random chance. There are well understood scientific reasons for these catastrophes. We have the power to reduce their impact, and we should use it.
The President has proposed a plan to fight climate change by controlling carbon emissions from the nation’s largest sources. You’ve heard it before, and it’s still true: Investments in renewable energy will create jobs and help make us energy independent. Latinos are strongly in favor of this plan. According to a poll by Latino Decisions, 86% of Latinos support the President taking action to limit carbon pollution.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, close to 50 percent of all Hispanic Americans live in counties that frequently violate the legal limit for ground-level ozone, which most of us call smog. That means millions of Latinos are at risk of worsening asthma, bronchitis and even death. The time for Latinos to get involved and take leadership roles in this fight is now.
That’s why I’m proud to host a panel at this year’s Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) public policy conference to highlight the importance of engaging Latinos. Latino leaders are becoming some of the nation’s most influential and important champions for a cleaner environment. They join a long line of environmental justice grassroots advocates who fought against incinerators, landfills, and other toxic industrial uses in their neighborhoods. As a community, we have a personal responsibility to ensure that climate change and renewable energy policies move forward to protect the health of our children and future generations.
I know it can be hard to feel encouraged or inspired when Congress looks dysfunctional. But when we think back on the many other great causes that succeeded throughout American history, we remember that none of them started on a straight, smooth-paved road. Civil rights faced much greater dysfunction – and violence – than clean air advocates face today. We can do this. We owe it to ourselves and to the future of our great country.
We Can Reduce Poverty If We Want To. We Just Have To Want To.
Mother Jones, Sept. 26, 2013
By Kevin Drum
Jared Bernstein makes an important point today: Several Nordic countries have made great strides in ending poverty, but it’s not because they have some kind of magic bullet. It’s because they give poor people more money and more services.The chart on the right shows raw poverty levels in blue. The Nordic countries are basically about the same as the United States. There’s no Scandinavian miracle that provides high-paying jobs for everyone. However, once you account for government benefits, the poverty rate in the Nordic countries is about half the rate in America. Universal health care accounts for some of this, and other benefits account for the rest. Some are means-tested, others are universal. There’s no single answer. The only thing these countries have in common is a simple commitment to taking poverty seriously and doing something about it. Bernstein approves:
In the age of inequality, such anti-poverty policies are more important than ever, as higher inequality creates both more poverty along with steeper barriers to getting ahead, whether through the lack of early education, nutrition, adequate housing, and a host of other poverty-related conditions that dampen ones chances in life.
This situation is only going to get worse as automation improves. Still, we’re plenty rich enough to address it if we want to. There’s nothing stopping us except our own will to do it.
NJ Supreme Court Overturns Affordable Housing Rules, Puts COAH on Tight Deadline
http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/13/09/26/affordable-housing/
Council has five months to come up with new quotas for low- and moderate-income housing.
Efforts to stop lead poisoning could be at risk
USA Today, Sept, 18, 2013
By Liz Szabo
Budget cuts could prevent health officials from protecting kids from lead poisoning.
Pediatricians and public-health advocates are working to revive programs to protect children from lead poisoning, after what they describe as a series of devastating blows to their efforts.
Congress all but eliminated federal funding to prevent lead poisoning in 2012, cutting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s lead budget by more than 90%. There is no safe level of lead, the CDC estimates that 535,000 American kids have enough lead in their blood to put them at high risk for lead poisoning, which causes intellectual impairments and behavioral problems.
Although lead is no longer used in gasoline or paint, many children are still exposed by living in old housing with peeling paint. USA TODAY also has documented the hazards to children from shuttered lead smelting factories, which left layers of lead in backyards and playgrounds across the USA.
“It’s like they’re declaring victory in a war that has not been won,” says Jerome Paulson, a professor at the George Washington University School of Medicine, who chairs the American Academy of Pediatrics’ committee on environmental health.
The American Academy of Pediatrics is circulating a petition among its members, asking them to urge national leaders to restore funding to prevent lead poisoning. The academy expects to send the petition — addressed to President Obama, CDC Director Thomas Frieden and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius — later this month.
Children’s advocates say they’re also concerned that an influential CDC lead-prevention committee is being demoted, buried too far down in the federal bureaucracy to have any influence over public policy.
Last year, that committee led the CDC to revise its “action level” for lead in 2012, cutting in half the level of lead exposure that should prompt doctors to closely monitor children and take other actions, such as looking for and removing sources of lead in their homes.
Yet that historic change has had little to no practical effect, according to a July report from the National Center for Healthy Housing. Instead of treating more children, state and local health departments have been forced to make deep cuts to their lead-poisoning prevention efforts.
Federal funding for the lead program fell from $29.3 million in fiscal year 2011 to less than $2 million in fiscal year 2012.
The federal sequestration further cut funds for lead-control efforts, shrinking the budget to $1.8 million, according to the CDC.
Frieden has asked Congress to boost that funding to $5 million for fiscal year 2014. That budget is not yet final.
Children’s health advocates say the CDC is also silencing its independent group of lead experts, the Advisory Committee for Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention.
Under a “planned restructuring,” the influential advisory group will become a subcommittee of the board of scientific counselors at the National Center for Environmental Health, one of the centers that make up the CDC.
In the future, the lead advisory committee — which formerly reported directly to Frieden and Sebelius — could be overruled by the board of scientific counselors, whose primary task is typically to oversee external peer review of agency programs, says Rebecca Morley,executive director of the National Center for Healthy Housing, an advocacy group that works on preventing lead poisoning.
“The committee is in essence being disbanded,” said advisory committee member Megan Sandel, associate professor of pediatrics and public health at Boston University’s Schools of Medicine and Public Health. “The move itself strips the committee of all its scientific strength and credibility. I truly believe this is about silencing a committee. Without this being an official federal advisory committee, the CDC and HHS do not have to answer or respond to any of our advice. These committees were designed to be above politics and this move would strip our ability to speak and protect America’s children.”
Bernadette Burden, a spokeswoman for the CDC, says the advisory committee will remain the agency’s “go-to group” on lead-poisoning prevention.
The CDC’s commitment to protecting children from lead has not changed, Burden says.
“Preventing lead poisoning and eliminating lead in a child’s environment, that is still our first priority,” she says.
Census Survey Paints Discouraging Portrait of NJ’s Poor and Middle Class
NJSpotlight, Sept. 19, 2013
By Colleen O’Dea
The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2012 American Community Survey paints a picture of a state not even close to regaining the wealth and high-paying jobs lost during the 2007-09 recession: Median household income was essentially stable at $69,667, but the proportion of families living in poverty rose to 8.3 percent and more than 1.1 million people were without health insurance.
Continue reading here…
How Private Prison Companies Make Millions Even When Crime Rates Fall
Mother Jones, Sept. 19, 2013
By Andy Kroll
We are living in boom times for the private prison industry. The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest owner of private prisons, has seen its revenue climb by more than 500 percent in the last two decades. And CCA wants to get much, much bigger: Last year, the company made an offer to 48 governors to buy and operate their state-funded prisons. But what made CCA’s pitch to those governors so audacious and shocking was that it included a so-called occupancy requirement, a clause demanding the state keep those newly privatized prisons at least 90 percent full at all times, regardless of whether crime was rising or falling.
Occupancy requirements, as it turns out, are common practice within the private prison industry. A new report by In the Public Interest, an anti-privatization group, reviewed 62 contracts for private prisons operating around the country at the local and state level. In the Public Interest found that 41 of those contracts included occupancy requirements mandating that local or state government keep those facilities between 80 and 100 percent full. In other words, whether crime is rising or falling, the state must keep those beds full. (The report was funded by grants from the Open Society Institute and Public Welfare, according to a spokesman.)
All the big private prison companies—CCA, GEO Group, and the Management and Training Corporation—try to include occupancy requirements in their contracts, according to the report. States with the highest occupancy requirements include Arizona (three prison contracts with 100 percent occupancy guarantees), Oklahoma (three contracts with 98 percent occupancy guarantees), and Virginia (one contract with a 95 percent occupancy guarantee). At the same time, private prison companies have supported and helped write “three-strike” and “truth-in-sentencing” laws that drive up prison populations. Their livelihoods depend on towns, cities, and states sending more people to prison and keeping them there.
You might be wondering: What happens when crime drops and prison populations dwindle in states that agreed to keep their private prisons 80 percent or 90 percent full? Consider Colorado. The state’s crime rate has sunk by a third in the past decade, and since 2009, five state-run prisons have shuttered because they weren’t needed. Many more prison beds remain empty in other state facilities. Yet the state chose not to fill those beds because Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper and CCA cut a deal to instead send 3,330 prisoners to CCA’s three Colorado prisons. Colorado taxpayers foot the bill for leaving those state-run prisons underused. In March, Christie Donner, executive director of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, estimated that the state wasted at least $2 million in taxpayer money using CCA’s prisons instead of its own.
That’s just one example of how private prison companies keep the dollars rolling in, whether crime is rising or waning. Not surprisingly, In the Public Interest’s report calls on local and state governments to refuse to include occupancy requirements and even ban such requirements with new legislation. “With governmental priorities pulling public funds in so many different directions, it makes no financial sense for taxpayers to fund empty prison beds,” the report says.
To read the full report (16 pages), scroll to the bottom of the original article on the Mother Jones web site.
House Republicans Pass Deep Cuts in Food Stamps
N.Y. Times, Sept. 19, 2013
By Ron Nixon
WASHINGTON — House Republicans narrowly pushed through a bill on Thursday that slashes billions of dollars from the food stamp program, over the objections of Democrats and a veto threat from President Obama.
The vote set up what promised to be a major clash with the Senate and dashed hopes for passage this year of a new five-year farm bill.
The vote was 217 to 210, largely along party lines.
Republican leaders, under pressure from Tea Party-backed conservatives, said the bill was needed because the food stamp program, which costs nearly $80 billion a year, had grown out of control. They said the program had expanded even as jobless rates had declined with the easing recession.
“This bill eliminates loopholes, ensures work requirements, and puts us on a fiscally responsible path,” said Representative Marlin Stutzman, Republican of Indiana, who led efforts to split the food stamps program from the overall farm bill. “In the real world, we measure success by results. It’s time for Washington to measure success by how many families are lifted out of poverty and helped back on their feet, not by how much Washington bureaucrats spend year after year.”
But even with the cuts, the food stamp program would cost more than $700 billion over the next 10 years.
Republicans invoked former President Bill Clinton in their defense of the bill, saying that the changes were in the spirit of those that he signed into law in 1996 that set work requirements for those who receive welfare.
But Democrats, many of whom held up pictures of people they said would lose their benefits, called the cuts draconian and said they would plunge millions into poverty.
“It’s a sad day in the people’s House when the leadership brings to the floor one of the most heartless bills I have ever seen,” said Representative James McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts. “It’s terrible policy trapped in a terrible process.”
The measure has little chance of advancing in the Senate, and Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan and the chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, called it “a monumental waste of time.”
The bill, written under the direction of the House majority leader, Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia, would cut $40 billion from the food stamp program over the next 10 years. It would also require adults between 18 and 50 without minor children to find a job or to enroll in a work-training program in order to receive benefits.
It would also limit the time those recipients could get benefits to three months. Currently, states can extend food stamp benefits past three months for able-bodied people who are working or preparing for work as part of a job-training program.
“This bill makes getting Americans back to work a priority again for our nation’s welfare programs,” House Speaker John A. Boehner said.
The bill would also restrict people enrolled in other social welfare programs from automatically becoming eligible for food stamps.
In addition, the legislation would allow states to require food stamp recipients to be tested for drugs and to stop lottery winners from getting benefits. The Senate farm bill also contains a restriction on lottery winners.
Critics of the measure said the cuts would fall disproportionately on children.
“Yes, the federal government has budget problems, but children didn’t cause them, and cutting anti-hunger investments is the wrong way to solve them,” said Bruce Lesley, president of First Focus Campaign for Children, a child advocacy group.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, nearly four million people would be removed from the food stamp program under the House bill starting next year. The budget office said after that, about three million a year would be cut off from the program.
The budget office said that, left unchanged, the number of food stamp recipients would decline by about 14 million people — or 30 percent — over the next 10 years as the economy improves. A Census Bureau report released on Tuesday found that the program had kept about four million people above the poverty level and had prevented millions more from sinking further into poverty. The census data also showed nearly 47 million people living in poverty — close to the highest level in two decades.
Historically, the food stamp program has been part of the farm bill, a huge piece of legislation that had routinely been passed every five years, authorizing financing for the nation’s farm and nutrition programs. But in July, House leaders split the bill’s farm and nutrition sections into separate measures, passing the farm legislation over Democrats’ objections.
The move came after the House rejected a proposed farm bill that would have cut $20 billion from the food stamp program. Conservative lawmakers helped kill the bill, saying the program needed deeper cuts.