Greg Kaufmann’s brilliant column for The Nation on how the new farm bill punishes children by gutting our food stamps program. This is an absolutely essential article to read.
Food stamp spending is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to amount to just 1.7 percent of federal spending over the next ten years—and people with access to food stamps when they are young have better health outcomes and less dependence on welfare assistance over the long-term. In fact, what the Republicans were attempting to do was toss 2 million people off of SNAP and prevent 210,000 low-income children from receiving free school meals. The bill failed because many Republicans wanted even deeper cuts.Finally, on Thursday, House Republicans took these hunger games to a new level of violence: they passed a farm bill stripped of any food stamp provision.
Via:
This Week in Poverty: Confronting Congressional Hunger Games | The Nation.
My conversation with Greg Kaufmann below: