The U.S. House today passed a nearly $1 trillion farm bill. The Senate is expected to take up the measure and approve it later this week, and presumably President Obama will sign it into law a few days after that. Forgive me if I am able to contain my rejoicing.

There are, of course, some good things about this bill, beginning with the fact that it passed the House with the support of Democrats and Republicans, suggesting that the partisan apocalypse may not be quite as close as we have feared. It apparently means that the price of milk won’t triple in the next 12 months. And it also does away with those noxious subsidies in which farmers were paid with taxpayer’s money not to grow crops. That has long been a gripe of mine; I once offered not to write anything more if the government would pay me, but alas, no one took me up on the idea.

The bill — for reasons that seem as curiously inexplicable as most of the stuff that passes through Congress these days — includes funding for the nation’s food stamp program. Regrettably, it means that more money is going to be taken away from the people who most need food stamps: the poor, the elderly, veterans. The realist in me says the compromise of getting bi-partisan approval for such a major bill is good. In my heart, however, I hurt for those who will suffer because of its provisions (and I don’t mean those who relied on not growing crops for their livelihood).

The food stamp program accounts for about three-quarters of the money in the bill. That’s a sad commentary on the state of this country’s income divisions. It will trim $8 billion from the food stamp program over the next 10 years. It could have been worse; some Republicans (remember the Tea Party?) wanted to cut $39 billion from it. Most Democrats wanted to preserve it or approve even fewer cuts. So this was a compromise, and that’s why it passed.

Again, compromise is a good thing, but not when it is accomplished over the empty stomachs of millions of Americans. And this cut comes in the wake of another, smaller, cut in food stamp checks that went into effect last November when the recession-era boost in funding came to an end. And how many Americans will be affected by this action? Approximately 47 million. To put that into perspective, consider that attendance at NFL games — and you know the NFL is the world’s largest live spectator sport excluding auto racing –last season totaled about 18 million. So it would take two and a half NFL seasons to reach the number of people in this nation receiving food stamps. The Tea Party enjoys thinking of those recipients as shiftless and irresponsible, but even if
some of those recipients might be, the number who are truly needy is overwhelming. And who speaks for them? Where is their plight treated in this mammoth farm bill?