Lott’s Highway Holdup

Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) is refusing to bring a bill before the Senate that would restore food stamps to eligible legal immigrants. Instead, his top priority is maximizing funds for the transportation bill, legislation that is closer, and with more payback, to his political heart. But Lott’s priorities mean thousands of legal immigrants who were promised food stamps will not receive them in a critical period on their road to citizenship.

Being held hostage is an agriculture bill involving more than $2 billion for food stamps and other Agriculture Department programs. The Republicans want to put all the money toward the budget-busting highway bills instead. The House and Senate bills, which each call for more than $200 million in spending, are now in conference committee. The proposed highway spending is well beyond that agreed in last year’s budget agreement, and that measure passed without identifying adequate offsets and is overloaded with unnecessary projects--$9 billion for 1,400 to 1,500 so-called “demonstration projects,” for instance, a euphemism for plain old fashion pork.

Lott is holding up the Agricultural Research, Extension and Education Reform Act of 1998, which would provide $818 million in food stamps ($188 million to California) over the next five years for about 250,000 eligible legal immigrants--children, the elderly, disabled and refugees--as agreed upon in last year’s balanced budget agreement.

The bill also provides for about $1.2 billion for agricultural programs--crop insurance, research and rural development over the next five years. The cost of the agriculture bill is fully offset by savings from changes in administrating the food stamp program. Still, Republicans want to grab that money.

Denying food to legal immigrants won’t raise anywhere near the money needed for the highway bill. Lott knows that, and is making a political mistake by trying to build infrastructure on the backs of qualified legal immigrants.