Dems getting heat from left over food cuts

[Freddie Stubbs]

Source: Des Moines Register

Anti-hunger activists are criticizing Congress by rolling back food-stamp benefits to pay for saving teacher jobs and to fund higher spending on school lunches and other child nutrition programs.

“These are real cuts with real impact on low-income households who, for the first time, will see their benefits fall from one month to the next,” according to the Food Research and Action Center.

The reduction in benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, as food stamps are now known, provided $11.9 billion for funding teacher salaries and other state programs.

Aides to Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Ia., issued a statement today saying that the reduction was returning benefits to levels where they were before they were increased as part of the 2009 stimulus bill.

Read more: http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/2010/08/11/dems-getting-heat-from-left-over-food-cuts/

[Better Today]

1. Okay, I know I'm out of it, but I really read that wrong...

I thought they were cutting leftover foods, doh! It sucks that everything is more important than us in the US.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

3. HA! Me too! -nt

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Better Today]

6. So starving the poor is anti-obesity? What a stupid concept. Everyone, and I mean everyone

comments that the poor who are obese are obese because of the quality of cheap food, now they'll have to buy even cheaper, less nutritious, more HRC laden crap. But hey, cheer away, I'm guessing you aren't in need of foodstamps.

[Beacool]

17. I think that he's being sarcastic.

;-)

[zogofzorkon]

24. Some people know how to read, thank a teacher.

[Better Today]

28. Perhaps, but these days it is getting hard to tell here on DU.

[awoke_in_2003]

14. you are kidding, right? nt

[fogonthelake]

29. Love your sig pic. GREAT

[awoke_in_2003]

40. I stole it from someone else...

right click on it and save it to your desktop. Then upload it to photobucket and you can put it in your sig line

[awoke_in_2003]

39. edit- wrong place. nt

[Zenlitened]

4. It's pretty mind-boggling, isn't it?

And memo to Sen. Harkin's aides: that's hardly a satisfying answer!

Aides to Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Ia., issued a statement today saying that the reduction was returning benefits to levels where they were before they were increased as part of the 2009 stimulus bill.

I mean, WTF? So what? The need out there is higher than ever. And I find it hard to believe that the childhood nutrition increase will exactly overlap the cuts in food stamps, leaving everyone unscathed. Not to mention fed.

What a tone-deaf thing to say. As if there's nowhere else to tap for resources. Oh, no no no. If them kinds wanna eat, some a youse other guys are gonna have ta go hungry.

:eyes:

[ProSense]

5. The change doesn't go into effect until after 2014.

That's more than four years from now.

[Zenlitened]

10. Well, that's a measure of good news. There's still time to fix it. - n/t

[Igel]

35. Of course, it makes some of the article self-parodying.

"These are real cuts with real impact on low-income households who, for the first time, will see their benefits fall from one month to the next."

Well, no, they aren't real cuts. They're predicted cuts. Unless the speaker is living in 2014 and has actually observed them, they are not "real" in any usual sense of the word.

The intentions may be real (although that may be unprovable); the plans may be real. But the cuts themselves, in a budget that hasn't been drawn up, affecting people who may not qualify for them in 2014 and who may qualify at the time but don't know it?

[davidinalameda]

7. you're right

people need those programs more than ever right now

[scentopine]

8. Nice - we are fighting our own children for food. Let's eat the rich. -nt

[Wilms]

9. Heat from the left, or the Professional Left?

:shrug:

[awoke_in_2003]

13. +100. nt

[sandnsea]

11. Ah, there's that do-nothing stimulus again

Amazing how the same people who beat the shit out of Democrats because the stimulus didn't help anybody are the ones who are now beating the shit out of Democrats for cutting from the stimulus.

[unkachuck]

12. "...rolling back food-stamp benefits to pay for saving teacher jobs..."

....they're robbing from Peter to pay Paul....where's Robin Hood when you need him? Certainly not in the Democratic Party....

[w4rma]

15. Obey says Team Obama suggested cutting food stamps to save Race to the Top from cuts

Remember that important NYT story from early this year describing the growing number of Americans whose sole income consists of food stamps...?

Well, months after that report came out, some genius in the Obama Administration, according to a very shrill David Obey, proposed offsetting funds to keep teachers in the schools by cutting food stamps. Said genius wanted to cut these people’s only safety net so Arne Duncan could go on privatizing our schools...

"It blows my mind that the White House would even notice the fight . I would have expected the president to say to the secretary, “look, you’re getting a good deal, for God’s sake, what this really does is guarantee that the rest of the money isn’t going to be touched.”

We gave $4.3 billion in the stimulus package, no questions asked. He could spend it any way he wants. … I trusted the secretary, so I gave him a hell of a lot more money than I should have...

We were told we have to offset every damn dime of . Well, it ain’t easy to find offsets, and with all due respect to the administration their first suggestion for offsets was to cut food stamps. Now they were careful not to make an official budget request, because they didn’t want to take the political heat for it, but that was the first trial balloon they sent down here. … Their line of argument was, well, the cost of food relative to what we thought it would be has come down, so people on food stamps are getting a pretty good deal in comparison to what we thought they were going to get. Well isn’t that nice. Some poor bastard is going to get a break for a change."
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/07/17/americas-dilemma-teachers-or-food
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8772149

[Beacool]

16. So, this is a shell game.

Funding one group by defunding another.

The bill “does not “cut” food stamp benefits, but rather returns a temporary increase of benefits that was included in the Recovery Act to normal, historical benefit levels,” the statement said. “Congress always intended for the food stamp increases in the recovery bill be temporary in nature. In fact, they were designed to end over time and revert back to normal levels. Rescinding food stamp increases several years from now is consistent with the original intent of the Recovery Act.”

The issue illustrates the difficulty the Democratic majorities in Congress are having as they struggle to increase spending while trying to avoid worsening the federal budget deficit.

There is an additional reduction in food stamps contained in a Senate-passed child nutrition bill. That legislation still must be approved by the House.

If that cut goes through as well, a family of four would see their benefits fall by $59 in November 2013, according to FRAC.

:crazy:

[ProSense]

18. No, it's the stimulus. Remember the package that was too small?

It wasn't mean to last forever. The fact that the food stamp increase is funded through 2014 isn't a shell game.

[gkhouston]

20. Seems like there's more than one package that's too small. n/t

[U4ikLefty]

27. LOL...good one!!!

[Beacool]

25. Times are too tough to cut food stamps now.

They need to extend the funding until the economy improves and people find jobs. Food stamps are what's keeping many people from going hungry.

[ProSense]

30. They are not cutting it now: after 2014 is more than four years from now. n/t

[Beacool]

34. Oh, OK.

;)

[gkhouston]

19. Yes, it's a shell game. If you want to pay teachers, you have to starve the poor.

Taxing the rich or cutting back on Pentagon spending would be unthinkable.

[ProSense]

21. How interested are you

in the providing for the poor?

[gkhouston]

22. I wish I'd seen that in the 24-hour window. I would have given it a rec. n/t

[customerserviceguy]

23. The Repukes were proud to have engineered this

They want to see factions of the Democratic Party blaming each other. It's how the Rethugs ended up losing power.

[Freddie Stubbs]

33. But if these teachers were layed off, they will not be among the starving poor

[IndianaGreen]

26. Congress should have cut the Pentagon's budget for the 75 wars it is currently engaged in

and bring the troops home instead.

[PNutt]

31. Now Wait Just A Damned Minute Here

We are currently embroiled in a discussion in congress on whether or not to re-up The Village Idiot's tax cuts for the rich that cost the US 1.8 Trillion Dollars in lost tax revenue over the 10 year period that they were designed for, but we are being forced to accept the rollback of a $25.00 per month increase in SNAP benefits for those who need it the most, after only 5 years? What in the hell has this country become? Have we lost our friggin minds? As a progressive, I am completely ashamed of the way that the current administration is treating those like myself who worked so hard to put them in the position that they are in. Our leaders both in the White House, and in Congress, are selling us out while pandering to the flatheaded righties, and the big corporations such as BP, the drug companies, the insurance companies, and the big banks. I'm here to tell you right now, this is NOT the HOPE and CHANGE that I voted for. This is fast becoming more of the same. Neverending wars, illegal prisons around the globe still operating, paying out huge sums of money to corrupt regimes around the globe, ignoring human rights just so we can still send boatloads of money and weapons to Israel, promoting offshore drilling for oil instead of pushing forward with alternative energy sources, hamming it up for the media, not prosocuting those involved in war crimes and human torture, etc, etc, etc. I know that we can do better than this, and unless something drastically changes over the next 2 years, I will be pushing hard to make another change, because I am not going to stand silently by and watch this load of crap any more.

[annabanana]

32. (as they should). . . n/t

[rocktivity]

36. Heat from the left?

What kind of a headline is that? Are there pro-starvation "activists," too?

:crazy:
rocktivity

[liskddksil]

37. The charter-school profiteers needed the money more I guess..

We couldn't do what Congressman Obey suggested, and reduced the funding for Race to the Top, in order to save all teacher's jobs. So the working-poor, as usual, must pay the price.

[ipaint]

38. How about we revisit this for the money....

"Three weeks ago, the Senate rejected a proposal to eliminate about $35 billion in tax subsidies to oil companies as millions of gallons of oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) proposed using these funds to reduce the deficit and fund state energy efficiency programs. The Sanders plan to close these loopholes lost by a vote of 35-61, with every Republican voting against it.

The vote to preserve outdated subsidies that make rich oil companies richer while creating little benefit to the taxpayers who foot the bill was a victory for the oil industry and its lobbyists. They hailed the “vote to preserve a domestic manufacturing industry that is critical to our nation's energy security and to the nascent economic recovery,” in the words of Charles T. Drevna, president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association."

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/07/big_oil_spigot.html

Plenty of time to walk it back in the next four years so the oil corps don't go hungry.