Congress is rushing to get lots done before its August recess. The Farm Bill is one of the bills Congress is working madly on. The entire House will probably vote on it today. The Farm Bill essentially sets the federal government's agricultural policy- crop subsidies, farmland conservation payments, bioenergy, and anti-hunger programs, like Food Stamps. It needs to be renewed every five years. The reauthorization that's being considered now would both broaden Food Stamp eligiblity and raise benefits. Getting food stamps is a lot like paying your income tax. You have to report certain assets, income, and expenses to find out how much in benefits you'll get. Likewise for eligibility- if your income or your assets are too high, you aren't eligible. So this bill would raise the standard deduction, index asset limits to inflation, and increase the deduction for child care, among others, the effect being that more people will be eligible for food stamps, and some people will get higher benefits. See this Coalition on Human Needs report for more. These improvements would cost $4 billion over 5 years (in an era of $3 trillion budgets). It's pennies, really, compared to the difference it'll make in the lives of the people living on the margins, where every dollar matters. Plus, the real value of food stamp benefits has been eroding signficantly (CBPP paper)- without these changes, things will continue down that path. As for other programs, the House bill would increase funding for The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), which purchases commodities and distributes them to food banks and other organizations. Many people depend on the food this program obtains, and food banks have been seen a decline in their TEFAP food allotments. This food bank in Oregon, for instance, is down 5 million pounds of the food it used to get from the program. And the House bill would give a permanent funding stream to the McGovern-Dole international school lunch program, which feeds kids in poor countries and helps them to go to school. So how good is the bill? Well it's good enough to get a veto threat from the Bush administration. They and many congressional Republicans mostly don't like that the bill would also shut down a loophole that lets foreign companies pay less taxes on payments made by their U.S. subsidiaries.