Senate cutting food stamps to pay for Medicaid and teacher funding

[roxiejules]

Ezra Klein:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/07/senate_cutting_food_stamps_to.html

It's the Sophie's choice of budget decisions: Should we cut Medicaid? Fire teachers? Or slash food stamps?

How about all three?

The reasoning for this is, well, I'll let Rep. David Obey lay it out. "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," he explains. But is that really a reason to cut food stamps? Obey didn't think so. "Some poor bastard is going to get a break for a change," he said.

snip

And here we are. Democrats needed to offset spending on two worthy, important programs. So they're cutting another important, worthy program. But you really can't think of a worse program to cut than SNAP. SNAP is an extraordinarily well-targeted stimulus. It goes to poor households, for something they need to buy. According to Mark Zandi's numbers, it's literally the most stimulative way to spend a dollar: Better than state and local aid, or unemployment insurance. You get more than $1.70 of economic activity for each buck you put in.

There's a part of me that wants to use this to knock down the canard that government is full of obvious waste and inefficiency. Democrats don't like to cut food stamps, and they'd avoid it if they thought they could. Budget rhetoric is full of easy choices, but budgets are about hard choices, and this is a hard, and ugly, choice.

But this is also a question of priorities, of what gets cut. Bernie Sanders put up an amendment last month to cut about $35 billion in oil and gas subsidies. It failed. Republicans are arguing to extend Bush's tax cuts for the rich with no offsets, and they may well succeed. But food assistance for poor families? You can get the votes to slash those.

[laughingliberal]

1. Great! Now WE take food out of childrens' mouths. Just Fucking Great!

God forbid, with a little extra, some poor person might have bought a CONVENIENCE FOOD!!!111 Or CANNED BEANS to go with their rice!!

[SusanaMontana41]

12. Well, it serves the oligarchy.

FU, U.S. Senate.

[laughingliberal]

13. Right there with you! nt

[ClassWarrior]

2. Hmmm... Let's see... What can we afford to cut for the sake of the children and the sick?...

I know! Food stamps!

:eyes:

NGU.

[juajen]

3. Perhaps it's time to have a tent city in Washington of old people preferable

in wheel chairs, with lots of signs and no food. Think they'll arrest the disabled and infirm, and let them starve? Can't see them taking people in wheel chairs to jail.

[Systematic Chaos]

6. Not to mention a few thousand of the able-bodied but destitute to act as bodyguards.

I say, BRING IT ON.

[Dr.Phool]

9. They'd probably taser the shit out of them.

A stationary target is much easier to hit than a moving one.

[sandnsea]

4. Wow, the stimulus included a 13.6% increase in food stamps

And here I thought it didn't do anything for anybody. An extra $25 for unemployment, money for COBRA, money for Pell Grants, and now I find there was an increase in food stamps too.

I think maybe some people better start standing up and appreciating these things when we get them so they can't get taken away anymore.

[nightrain]

11. missing the point by a mile, besides twisting it....

Do you actually agree with cutting food stamps then?

Say, as opposed to oil and gas subsidies? or the funding for weapons, invasion and occupation of other nations?

[aquart]

5. They have more people needing food stamps. How can they cut?

They have to increase.

[Mac1949]

7. Perhaps it's an object lesson in freedom.

After all, who knows better what freedom truly is than someone who has been freed from the responsibilities of having a job, having a home, and now freed from having sufficient food.:sarcasm:

[ejpoeta]

8. i'd like to see those assholes live on food stamps. let them actually live it before they go saying

what a great deal poor folks are getting! i may make to much to get food stamps by $200, but i was on them before and even with the most careful shopping they don't go very far. the trouble is that the people that are supposedly supposed to be representing us don't have a friggin clue. they live in a bubble where they fly on private planes and live the high life. how many of them even know what it's like for the rest of us. it's enough to drive a person mad. i want them to walk in our shoes. i want them to have to live with the choices they make for the rest of us because right now they don't.

[madmom]

10. I think there should be a law that makes every representative of the people

live with the poorest of his constituents for 1 month. NO perks, live exactly as they do! No secret service, no free lunch or hair cuts. No limos or nice clothes nothing! They must eat the same food, go to work (if they have a job) everything exactly the same!

[JohnWxy]

14. No doubt this is causing endless perverse delight to Republicans

[JohnWxy]

15. Bernie Sanders put up an amendment last month to cut about $35 billion in oil and gas subsidies??

I didn't know Sanders did that! NOw that's something these newborn Deficit fighters ought to cheer for!