As Congress leaves to start the August recess, one key piece of legislation that has not been finalized is a Farm Bill. The U.S. House and Senate both passed separate versions of a Farm Bill. The House broke a 40 year tradition and removed SNAP funding, commonly referred to as food stamps, from their version of the legislation. In this interview with KASU's Mark Smith, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack blasts the House for not getting its work done and separating the SNAP program from the rest of the Farm Bill.
Johnathan Reaves is the faculty advisor and editor-in-chief for Delta Digital News Service and the former News Director for KASU Public Radio. As part of an Air Force Family, he moved to Arkansas from Minot, North Dakota in 1986. He was first bitten by the radio bug after he graduated from Gosnell High School in 1992. While working on his undergraduate degree, he worked at KOSE, a small 1,000 watt AM commercial station in Osceola, Arkansas. Upon graduation from Arkansas State University in 1996 with a degree in Radio-Television Broadcast News, he decided that he wanted to stay in radio news. He moved to Stuttgart, Arkansas and worked for East Arkansas Broadcasters as news director and was there for 16 years.