Food-Stamp Folly

To hear critics such as Paul Krugman, the New York Times editorial board, Ezra Klein, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the president, etc., you’d think congressional Republicans want to slash food-stamp funding to finance handouts to defense contractors. But, in relation to the scope of the structural dysfunction of the food-stamp program, the reforms proposed by congressional Republicans are actually very modest.

The Food Stamp Program was originally included in the Department of Agriculture under the high New Deal logic that the federal government could prop up one sector (agriculture) by subsidizing others (“under-nourished inner city folks with outstretched hands” according to Milo Perkins, the program’s first administrator) to buy its products. This original reasoning no longer applies and is largely forgotten. Nonetheless, under the Farm Bill currently being debated in the Senate, the food-stamp program would account for $80 billion of the Department of Agriculture’s $100 billion budget. As a staff member of the Senate Budget Committee tells NRO, this is a Food Stamp Bill, not a Farm Bill.

Read more: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/303200/food-stamp-folly-nash-keune