Republicans: We Were Too Nice to the Hungry, But We’ve Fixed That
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/09/republicans-we-were-too-nice-to-the-hungry.htmlRepublicans: We Were Too Nice to the Hungry, But We’ve Fixed That
By Jonathan Chait
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The putative rationale for the food-stamp cuts is that eligibility standards have loosened, or that it encourages sloth. Jonathan Cohn makes quick work of these claims, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities makes long, detailed work of them. Click on those links if you want a blow-by-blow refutation. The upshot is that food stamps are a meager subsidy, of less than $1.40 per meal, for people either stuck in very low paid jobs or unable to find work at all. Their cost has increased because the recession has increased the supply of poor, desperate people. Republicans have offered specious comparisons to welfare reform, but that law both offered funds for job training and was passed in a full-employment economy. Neither of these conditions holds true of the GOP’s food-stamp cuts, whose only significant result would be the first-order effect of making very poor people hungrier.
CNN reported last night that Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, a Republican supporter of the bill, received a daily meal allowance of $127.41, or 91 times the average daily food-stamp benefit. Lucas is also notable as a recipient of the agriculture subsidies his committee doles out: He and his wife have collected more than $40,000 worth.
It’s the juxtaposition of the two programs that so clearly exposes the party’s agenda. Anti-government ideology can justify even the most vicious cuts to the safety net. It can’t justify the massive socialist scheme that is agriculture policy. And, to be fair, conservative intellectuals generally don’t justify agriculture socialism. But the Republican Party certainly does. The ultraconservative Republican Study Committee recently banned the Heritage Foundation from its meetings because Heritage denounced the GOP’s farm subsidies. There is a grim hilarity here: Republicans punished Heritage for its one technocratically sane position.
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It’s not baffling, nor is the notion that the Republican Party protects the class interests of the rich a “stereotype.” It’s an analysis that persuasively explains the facts.
Indeed, it’s the only analysis that persuasively explains the facts. I’d prefer to abolish agriculture subsidies completely while keeping in place (or boosting) food rations for the poor. A libertarian might want to abolish both programs, a socialist might want to keep both. I’d disagree but attribute the disagreement to philosophical differences. What possible basis can be found to justify preserving subsidies for affluent farmers while cutting them for the poor? What explanation offers itself other than the party’s commitment to waging class war?
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Thanks, SummerSnow! 
members of the Republican Party, who should be chased to the hills, as the creator of the monster., not the monster himself, poor guy. 
They've been so good at the "Grand Bargains"
Maybe they can talk their good friends into only cutting half as much. We should be grateful for that! We can't expect ponies, unicorns, and rainbows. The publicons deserve to get their cuts! It's only fair.
racism, class division along the classic very rich, very poor lines. Frustrated, deranged people with guns, some exploding bombs in crowded venues of fun or workplaces or shopping malls. Wars with no end and hundreds of thousands killed and displaced. Civil wars with hundreds of thousand killed and displaced. Cruelty of all types perpetrated by human beings on other human beings. Political party's playing god with peoples lives, threatening to withhold needed medical care, ability to feed families, telling women their bodies are not their own......I could go on and on. What's the use. I hope we grow up soon.
