Yesterday, the House Republicans finally got around to dealing with the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), generally known as “food stamps.” Traditionally, food assistance to the poor was linked to farm subsidies in the Farm Bill. But this year, the Republicans just couldn’t do it, because the leadership was only able to offer a $20 billion cut to SNAP—the nihilistic wing of the party refused to vote for the bill without a $40 billion cut. So back in July, they cut the Farm Bill into two pieces: one for support of farmers and one for support of the poor.
Very quickly they passed the “farmers” bill. This part of the Farm Bill has long been attacked by liberals and conservatives alike as crony capitalism. As it is, it gives billions of dollars away to very wealthy and profitable farmers. But the House Republicans not only funded it. They funded it for more than Obama had requested. Apparently, there is no limit to Republican largesse when it comes to the rich.
It took the House Republicans over two months, but they finally passed the “poor people” bill. And of course, the nihilists got their $40 billion cut. In addition to this, states will have strong incentives to cut the program even more. Estimates indicate that as many as 6 million people will lose access to SNAP benefits. There was this stunning bit of hypocrisy:
All of this is not to say that the Republicans do not have their stated reasons for being for these cuts. Initially they stated that it was all about stopping fraud. But there is basically no fraud in the system. Now, they claim that they are just trying to get those lazy bums to get jobs. They point to the economic recovery as a reason that there should be less people receiving SNAP benefits. But Paul Krugman demolished this argument earlier today. Although there has been an improvement at the top, the poor have seen no economic improvement at all. He provided the following graph to show that SNAP enrollment and the plight of the poor work in lockstep:
There really is no point in countering the Republican arguments here. This is as clear an example of what the Republicans are as you will ever seen. They want to spend money on the rich. They do not want to spend money on the poor. It isn’t that they are hypocrites so much as that their constituency is simply the rich. Earlier today, Jonathan Chait responded to Henry Olsen at the National Review who found this behavior “baffling” and referred to the image of Republicans as “Scrooge McDucks” as a stereotype:
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?
The problem for the Republicans is that there are very few rich people. So they need to maintain the pretense that they really care about the non-rich. But they are indeed lucky that they have a mainstream press that is willing to pretend that they mean what they say. It isn’t just the National Review that won’t admit that Republicans simply hate those who make less than a quarter million dollars a year. It’s all about “plausible deniability” except that rather than bombing the poor in Cambodia, the Republicans are starving the poor in this country. They claim to be helping the poor. But it takes a lot of effort and apologetics to believe that.