Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio
Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, the ranking member on the House Agriculture Department Operations, Oversight and Nutrition Subcommittee, will manage the Democratic debate when the House takes up a bill that would cut food stamps by $40 billion over 10 years, House Agriculture Committee ranking member Collin Peterson, D-Minn., told The Hagstrom Report today.

Fudge played a key role in organizing Democratic opposition to the farm-program-only farm bill that passed the House in July with only Republican votes.

The measure to cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP or food stamps, has been organized by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., and Peterson said he will vote against it.

Peterson, who said Tuesday that he believes President Barack Obama would veto another extension of the 2008 farm bill, said today that he remains concerned that Republicans do not have a clear path toward passage of a farm bill this year.

Peterson noted that he does not blame House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., for the situation, but believes that Cantor, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., have not been working in a coordinated fashion.

Lucas’s office did not return a call seeking comment on who would manage the nutrition bill on the House floor for the Republicans.

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, is the chairman of the House Agriculture Department Operations, Oversight and Nutrition Subcommittee. Neither the subcommittee nor the full committee has held a hearing on the proposed SNAP cuts.

Peterson said he believed SNAP should be updated but that he has been unable to convince the Republicans to hold hearings and make changes in the program in an orderly way.

“It’s all politics. What Cantor is doing is all politics,” Peterson said in an interview, noting that many Republican governors had requested the waivers from federal standards.

The Cantor bill would eliminate the states’ abilities to request waivers from federal rules when unemployment rates are high.