http://food.change.org/blog/view/senate_cuts_food_stamp_funds_leaves_oil_and_gas_subsidies_intact
Times are better now, and besides the government needs that extra money to help make sure there are actually teachers when your child goes back to school this year.
From what I understand between 3-400,000 won't be coming back to school this year to teach our children, unless the government forks over for their salary, because the States don't have it, to be able to gainfully employ them.
America's poor rarely catch a break these days. The Senate is expected to vote today for a bill that will cut food stamp benefits by $6.1 billion to help fund Medicaid and teachers' jobs, reasoning they were too high now that food costs are lower than predicted. Proponents essentially argued that poor people had too much money for food.
As the Washington Post's Ezra Klein explains, last year's federal Recovery Act increased the amount of money for food stamps, or the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), to about $80 more per household each month. Amid the recession and high unemployment, about six million more people registered for the program in the past year alone, so program costs boomed from $20 billion to $65 billion. Meanwhile, food prices have deflated from last year's high rates. Now people are able to get more bang for their buck, hence the Senate's idea to cut payments. It's frustrating not only because America's poor, working, and middle class are suffering at record levels and could use this tiny leg up, but also because it's a really stupid cut for the overall economic picture: According to Klein, food stamps serve as one of the best forms of stimulus money, to the tune of $1.70 of activity for every dollar spent. In other words, our economy desperately needs this.
"This is also a question of priorities," Klein writes, explaining that the Senate voted against proposed cuts to oil and gas subsidies, and may continue tax cuts for the wealthy. "But food assistance for poor families? You can get the votes to slash those."
