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Democrats not feeling at all amenable to Republicans' new food-stamp proposal

by Erika Johnsen

posted at 5:21 pm on August 13, 2013 by Erika Johnsen

And here comes the almighty uproar I predicted earlier this month, wherein House Democrats rage against Republicans' obviously heartless proposal that ventures to cut the national food-stamp program by an utterly draconian five percent. The fact that enrollment in the food-stamp program has grown by seventy percent in the past five years — and the fact that the program is riddled with waste/fraud/abuse — and, oh yeah, the fact that deficit-spending and a metastisizing welfare state will do nothing to actually mitigate the growing problem of poverty — are evidently not relevant. Via The Hill:

House Democrats are pressing Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to back a robust food stamp program or risk a spike in hunger nationwide.

The Democrats characterize the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as "our country's most critical anti-hunger program," and are calling on GOP leaders to scrap plans to cut funding by tens of billions of dollars in a letter sent to Boehner on Monday that was signed by every member of the caucus.

"We strongly believe in the critical importance of SNAP," said the letter, which was spearheaded by Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and James McGovern (D-Mass.). "Given the essential nature of this program to millions of American families, the final language of the Farm Bill or any other legislation related to SNAP must be crafted to ensure that we do not increase hunger in America."

So there's the choice — refuse to make anything more than a miniscule cut to the food-stamp budget, or, apparently, increase hunger in America. That's it. …The Democrats certainly have the intellectually cheap populism of the War on Poverty going for them, which in this instance is serving as an aggressive poseur occupying the moral high ground, unfortunately. Republicans just don't care about material hardship and hunger, goes the shtick — never mind that Democrats are working at alleviating the symptoms while Republicans are trying to actually cure the underlying disease.

Meanwhile, while members of the Obama administration are evidently still convincedthat food stamps are actually some kind of form of economic stimulus, food stamp enrollment keeps growing while the economy and employment continue to stagnate. What a bizzare correlation, no?

Food-stamp use rose 2.4% in the U.S. in May from a year earlier, with more than 15% of the U.S. population receiving benefits.

One of the federal government's biggest social welfare programs, which expanded when the economy convulsed, isn't shrinking back alongside the recovery. …

The number of recipients in the food stamp program, formally known as theSupplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), is at 47.6 million, or nearly one in six Americans.

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Democrats not feeling at all amenable to Republicans' new food-stamp proposal
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John Hames