Food Stamp Fiasco

The Senate refuses to cut $20 billion out of $770 billion.

A record 44.7 million people received food stamps in fiscal 2011, up from 28.2 million as recently as 2008. The cost has more than doubled in that same period, to $78 billion, and is on track to account for 78% of farm bill spending over the next decade. One in seven Americans now qualifies.

Once there was a stigma to going on the dole, and it was seen as a last resort. But now the Agriculture Department runs radio and TV ads prodding people to get the free food, as in a recent campaign that says food stamps will help you lose weight. A federal website boasts about strategies that have "increased program participation" with special emphasis on Hispanics because "our data show that many low-income Latinos simply don't apply for [food stamps] even though they're eligible."

In the 1990s Bill Clinton boasted that welfare reform took Americans off the dole. The Obama Administration boasts about how many it has added.

Enter Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions, who proposed reforms to limit the worst excesses. One proposal would have established a federal asset test to ensure that food stamps aren't going to families that may not have an income but have tens of thousands of dollars in savings or may even live in a million-dollar home. Some 39 states have no real asset test for food stamps, which means wealthy families without anyone in the job market are eligible, and 27 have gross-income limits that are above 130% of the federal poverty guidelines.

That amendment lost 56-43, with every Democrat except Missouri's Claire McCaskill opposing it. New England Republicans Scott Brown, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe and Nevada's Dean Heller joined the anti-reformers.

Mr. Sessions also tried to end the preposterous federal policy of paying some $500 million in bonuses to states that sign up more people for food stamps. This is the way government becomes a permanent feedback loop promoting even bigger government. That amendment lost 58-41, with every self-described Democratic "deficit hawk" opposed.

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