The obscene timing of food stamp cuts

October 31, 2005

With all that’s going on with the White House leak scandal and the Supreme Court, it’s important that stories like this one don’t get lost in the shuffle.

On Friday, the Department of Agriculture released new data on hunger in the United States. The results weren’t encouraging.

Findings show that the number of people living in food insecure households has risen by nearly 2 million people (from 36.3 million individuals in 2003 to 38.2 million in 2004). More than 13 million children live in food insecure households. The number of people who live in households that suffer from outright hunger rose from 9.6 to 10.6 million. These increases in hunger and food insecurity are sharper than in previous years and they do not yet include the impact of the hurricanes of 2005.

In fact, according to the agency, hunger rates have gone up five years in a row. Literally just a few hours later, a Republican-run House Agriculture Committee responded to the news with the kind of compassionate conservatism we’ve come to expect from 21st century Republicans.

On a party-line vote, a Republican-run U.S. House of Representatives committee voted to cut food stamps by $844 million on Friday, just hours after a new government report showed more Americans are struggling to put food on the table.

About 300,000 Americans would lose benefits due to tighter eligibility rules for food stamps, the major U.S. antihunger program, under the House plan. […]

“This is not a giveaway program that results in windfall profits,” said North Carolina Democrat G.K. Butterfield in opposing the cuts. “That is not moral. That is not American.”

Antihunger activists said hunger rates were up for the fifth year in a row, so the cuts were a mistake.

“It is hard to imagine any congressional action that is more detached from reality,” said James Weill of the Food Research and Action Center.

“Cutting food stamps now is a scandal,” said David Beckman of Bread for the World, pointing to losses from hurricanes.

Congressional Republicans have their priorities; are they yours?

Message from the rethugs: We don’t care.
People on food stamps don’t matter. They’re not the constituency.
Is anyone surprised at these actions, or just surprised how naked the agenda is becoming?

  • That’s a very “Christian” thing to do, don’t you think?

    As Christ said about helping the downtrodden: “Most certainly I tell you, inasmuch as you didn’t do it to one of the least of these, you didn’t do it to me.” — Matthew 25:31-46

    What is WRONG with these Republicans?!

    (I’m in danger of creating the impression here that I’m a Christian — I am not, I’m a borderline atheist, but at least I understand the essence of what Christianity teaches.)

  • Let’s see how far from the front page this news hits tomorrow. My bet is that the MSM doen’t give a crap about poor people, either.

  • These Republicans don’t give a rat’s ass about anyone who isn’t born with a million dollar trust fund with one exception. When they need their votes they are caring moral christian people. The terrible thing is how many poor christian people get told to vote for the rethug’s bye their religous leaders who I think are mostly crooks anyway. You could take Pat Robertson as a glaring example of one of these crooks.

  • I don’t think they have a clue who these tens of millions of Americans recieving food stamps are. Sure, these lawmakers may not actually know anyone recieving food stamps but they wouldn’t have to look much further than in the ranks of those they claim to support to find families benefitting from the program they are so anxious to cut.

    According to the Air Force [Source] in 2000 there were 6,300 military families recieving food stamp benefits. One can only assume that the number has gone up since (it seems that nobody maintains statistics on this, or at least nobody that I can find).

    It is a travesty that a nation which prides itself on leading the world economically, militarilly and socially would fail to provide for something as fundamental as feeding our children. We are the people fighting their wars, cooking their meals, tending to their McMansions and repairing their vehicles.

  • What’s Wal-Mart going to do now? They used to counsel their underpaid serfs how to get food stamps, just as they still counsel their uninsured peons how to get medicaid. If they don’t watch it, they’ll have to begin paying their employees out of their corporate profits instead of our tax coffers.

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