Iowa’s GOP congressmen should explain their support of misguided farm bill
“The first farm bill, crafted in the 1930s, was aimed at helping Americans cope with the Great Depression. It sought to aid farmers by boosting crop prices and eventually established food assistance for low-income people. The idea for the first food stamp program is generally credited to Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace, an Iowan who later became vice president, and the program’s first administrator, Milo Perkins, who described the goal as ‘a picture of a gorge, with farm surpluses on one cliff and undernourished city folks with outstretched hands on the other. We set out to find a practical way to build a bridge across that chasm.’”