Basu: Which group deserves more help, big farmers or low-income families?

The new president unveiled his first budget last week, giving ordinary Iowans little to celebrate. Besides major spending cuts to health care, the environment and education, it lops 21 percent off agriculture programs. Iowa will see cuts topping $100 million in programs that help people pay their heating bills, improve blighted neighborhoods and improve drinking water, which is no small matter. 

And then there’s food for the hungry. The Trump budget cuts $38 billion to Farm Bill programs including a cut of one-third to food stamps, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for low-income people. The program serves 381,000 Iowans, or 12 percent of the population.

Costs would be shifted to the states in stages, starting with 10 percent in 2020 and reaching 25 percent, or $193 billion, after 10 years, according to the  Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which calls it “a massive cost shift to states.” For Iowa, 25 percent more would mean about $850 million after 10 years, according to Stacy Dean, vice president for food assistance policy at the center. 

States would be given the Hobson’s choice of cutting the current benefit level in half or coming up with the $850 million. A cut bringing the average SNAP benefit in Iowa of $110 per person per month down to $63 would be deeply felt.

The only people who should be celebrating are those earning in the top 1 percent, or more than $1 million a year. Their taxes would go down by about $50,000 a year. The budget also smiles on the military industrial complex, adding 10 percent, to defense spending.

Those of us who opposed Trump's candidacy were quite sure he wasn’t in politics on behalf of those left behind. The sad irony is that many who voted for the flamboyant businessman/crude-talking reality TV star thought he cared about people like them. His budget shows which Americans he prioritizes: People born privileged and invested in perpetuating the income divide in their own favor. People like him.

Iowa has 175,000 "food insecure" people, one in eight Iowans. The Food Bank of Iowa distributes more than a million pounds of food a month to low income people, many of whom have middle-class jobs but also a family member with a disability, or are single mothers with many children.

To qualify for SNAP, a person must be at 160 percent of the federal poverty level or below, or $38,880 for a family of four. More than half of households receiving it have at least one working member. Nearly three-quarters of Iowa’s recipients are families with children; more than one in five has a disabled or elderly family member.

Responding to the proposed cuts last week, Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley expressed alarm on Iowa Public Radio about proposed crop-insurance cuts to Iowa farmers, but seemed OK with cuts to SNAP.

Arguing that cutting crop insurance subsidies would leave taxpayers responsible for any crop damages from natural disasters, the Republican Grassley said, “The food stamp program was expanded based upon stimulating the economy” during the 2009 recession. "Now that the economy’s been stimulated, it seems to me to be legitimate to raise the question, 'Why are we continuing what was expanded for the purpose of stimulus and not for the purpose of better nutrition?' ”

The 2009 economic stimulus signed by President Obama boosted the SNAP benefit by 20 percent. But the temporary increase ended in 2013, Dean said.

I asked Grassley’s spokesman, Michael Zona, what the senator meant. He responded by email that unemployment is half a point lower than it was before the recession, yet “spending levels and enrollment in SNAP remain significantly higher than in 2008 (pre-Great Recession), when unemployment was higher. “

But that argument assumes everyone needing food aid is unemployed, a fallacy. Use of the Food Bank of Iowa has increased the last few years to its highest level, though unemployment is down, said Danny Akright, its spokesman.“We’re seeing economic indicators that the economy is doing better," he said. “We’re seeing people in poverty are not doing better.”

Trump's budget would also end a waiver program under which states could extend the maximum period a childless adult could receive SNAP. 

 Bruce Babcock, an economics professor at Iowa State University, says Grassley’s case against SNAP subsidies would be better directed at the crop insurance program. "Unlike crop insurance, the overwhelming majority of SNAP participants are poor so we know that SNAP payments are well-targeted," he wrote in an e-mail. "There are almost no poor farmers, and almost no farmers out there who could not pay more for crop insurance if they really need the insurance.”

Zona sent over an expanded statement attributed to Grassley citing a national debt approaching $20 trillion, and saying "every corner of the federal budget should be reviewed for potential savings to the taxpayer. Any reduction in spending on farm programs or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program should be done responsibly and without undermining the important purposes they both serve.”

But Babcock isn’t optimistic. “My bet is that Congress will choose to take money from SNAP to make sure that large, well-capitalized and financed farmers continue to receive current subsidy levels,” he says.

Mine, too. And that would do harm at so many levels, it needs to be fought.

Rekha Basu is an opinion columnist for The Des Moines Register. Contact: rbasu@dmreg.com Follow her on Twitter @RekhaBasu and at Facebook.com/ColumnistRekha. Her 2013 book, "Finding Her Voice: A collection of Des Moines Register columns about women's struggles and triumphs in the Midwest," is available at ShopDMRegister.com/FindingHerVoice