WASHINGTON WATCH: FOOD STAMPS: WALKING A TIGHTROPE

When the House Agriculture Committee's handling of food stamp reform prompted the conservative editorial page of the Wall Street Journal to call 8th District Rep. Bill Emerson a "welfare cheat" and the liberal editorial page of the Washington Post to praise him for doing "a good deed," it should have sent a signal across Emerson's bow that he might not be on the right side of the issue. It isn't often that Emerson finds himself with such a liberal fan and conservative detractor. But in actuality, both publications misidentified the Cape Girardeau representative's critical role in the House of Representatives reformation of food stamps. The food stamp program is the second largest welfare program in the country, surpassed only by Medicaid. Last year, the program assisted over 27 million people at a cost above $27 billion. The food stamp program is also one of the most -- if not the most -- fraud-ridden programs in the federal government. The inspector general's office estimates that 10 percent of food stamp dollars are trafficked illegally each year. This figure doesn't include street-level abuse, so total food stamp fraud is actually much higher.As chairman of the Agriculture subcommittee responsible for reforming the food stamp program, Emerson made clear his intentions from the outset. Deriding the current system as "a disaster," he called for "consolidation, integration and automation" of food stamps and other welfare programs. With these goals in mind, he held extensive hearings over a two-week period. Those invited to testify offered a broad range of perspectives from within and outside government.In the end, the debate came down to whether food stamps should be block-granted to the states, as promised in the Republican Contract With America, or whether the program should remain under the jurisdiction of Congress and the Department of Agriculture. On one side were the firebrand Republicans, including most of the GOP freshmen and many GOP governors. On the other side: a diverse coalition of special interest groups and politicians, including many of Emerson's Agriculture Committee colleagues.Unfortunately, this debate was in the main portrayed by the Washington press corps in political terms, with editorial writers cynically ascribing the worst of motives to those with whom they disagreed. Thus, to the conservative Wall Street Journal, anyone who stood against block grants became a stooge for the farm lobby. And to the liberal Washington Post, anyone who was in favor of sending the program to the states became a demagogue willing to sacrifice women and children for the sake of a political manifesto. Actually, the argument was much more complicated.Both sides of the block grant argument had good points. Block grant supporters were correct in demanding better coordination between food stamps and the rest of welfare reform. Under the current structure, the food stamp program undercuts innovation by the states. For example, food stamp payments currently go up if other welfare assistance goes down, severely limiting the power of states to establish incentives for recipients to go to work.Opponents of the block grant strategy, meanwhile, accurately stressed that some reforms could be implemented immediately on a national basis to help reduce fraud and abuse, as well as some waste. Maintaining food stamps on the federal level would also guarantee that the assistance would go towards food aid and not something else.Ultimately, under Emerson's leadership, the Agriculture Committee agreed upon an innovative middle ground. Among the reforms: work requirements for able-bodied recipients with no dependents, authorization for states to establish one set of rules for families applying for food stamps and other welfare programs and tightened controls to prevent waste and abuse. Most importantly, the committee approved legislation that would turn over the program in the form of a block grant to those states that establish an electronic payment system to dispense food aid. In all, the reforms consolidate a half-dozen welfare programs and save the federal government an estimated $16 billion over the next five years.

It isn't the exclusively state-centered plan that was in the Contract With America. Nor is it the status quo federal program that the Washington Post wanted. But it is innovative, and it is ambitious. Now the main question is whether it will get beyond the House of Representatives.

Jon K. Rust is a Washington-based writer for the Southeast Missourian.