This letter went to all House and Senate Farm Bill Conferees:

March 12, 2002

The Honorable ________
U.S. Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510

Re: Food stamp provisions in the Farm Bill

Dear Chairman ________:

The Food Stamp Program is a critically important program that needs considerable strengthening. The elements of that strengthening are pending in the Farm Bill conference, particularly in the Senate bill's nutrition title. That is why we urge you to include a very strong nutrition title in the final conference report of the 2002 Farm Bill, adopting the Senate approved level of funding for the Food Stamp Program.

The Food Stamp Program is the nation's first defense against hunger. As welfare recipients try to make the transition from cash assistance to work, the Food Stamp Program provides a nutrition safety net for working poor families and a critical support for work. During times of economic downturn, the program has a proven countercyclical effect. In short, the program is good for nutrition, for bolstering family incomes, for children's health and development, for work support, and for the economy.

Therefore, it is critical that the Farm Bill provide a comprehensive reauthorization of the Food Stamp Program, including food stamp restorations for many legal immigrants. Like the National Governors Association, the American Public Human Services Association, America's Second Harvest, and many religious denominations, we strongly support the immigrant provisions and the general scope of the Senate bill.

We commend both the House and the Senate for passing Farm Bills with a range of positive Food Stamp Program improvements, including those regarding program benefits, access, simplification and program evaluation. During conference, we urge you to:

• Support the provisions in the Senate bill that provide food stamp benefits to legal immigrant children, legal immigrants who have been in the United States for more than five years, and other groups of vulnerable legal immigrants. We urge you, however, to remove the proposed requirement in the Senate bill for states to make their own complicated immigration law determinations about peoples' immigration status in the years before the date of food stamp application.

The Urban Institute's 1999 National Survey of America's Families found more than one third of all children of immigrants were living in families that were encountering difficulty affording food or otherwise were living on the very edge of hunger. The restorations in the Senate bill will help reduce the prevalence of hunger in low-income legal immigrant households, among children and among adults with long attachment both to this country and to the workforce.

• Support other eligibility and benefit improvements in the Senate bill for vulnerable populations, especially: the option to provide six month transitional benefits for those leaving cash assistance for work; scaling the standard deduction to family size and having it keep pace with inflation; raising and phasing out the shelter deduction cap; and relaxing harsh time limits for jobless, childless adults willing to work.

• Support the House bill provisions reforming the quality control (QC) system, while adding Senate language that allows adjustments for states with large legal immigrant communities or particularly large numbers of working families with children. The current QC system imposes financial sanctions on about half the states based on unrealistic reporting requirements. Food stamp recipients are most often the victims of these rules.



• Support provisions in the Senate bill which simplify and streamline food stamp program rules, allowing for shorter and more easily understood food stamp applications and more flexibility as to the frequency of required office visits and income documentation procedures.

America's Second Harvest, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Catholic Charities and others consistently report growing requests for food assistance from low-income families not just during the recent economic downturn, but earlier during the late 1990s period of growth. They also report that clients' problems with access to food stamps are a primary cause. The final Farm Bill must include the crucial improvements described above in order to ensure the effectiveness and strength of the Food Stamp Program as the nation's core anti-hunger program. We urge you to include these priorities in the final conference report for the 2002 Farm Bill.

Sincerely,