Amanda wanted me to post this for her - at the moment she is too mad and upset to type. The most amazing part of this low-blow budget cut is how chump-change this is in our record-breaking deficit. What is it now? I don't even remember - I can't keep up... I think it's around $318 billion.

And this administration finds it necessary to cut a measly $844 million from the poorest of the poor - taking away some people's only opportunity to buy food, and it even affects free lunches for kids in school. This is simply an asshole move - and I'm at a loss for words...

On a party-line vote, a Republican-run U.S. House of Representatives committee voted to cut food stamps by $844 million on Friday, just hours after a new government report showed more Americans are struggling to put food on the table.

About 300,000 Americans would lose benefits due to tighter eligibility rules for food stamps, the major U.S. antihunger program, under the House plan. The cuts would be part of $3.7 billion pared from Agriculture Department programs over five years as part of government-wide spending reductions.

(...)

"This is not a giveaway program that results in windfall profits," said North Carolina Democrat G.K. Butterfield in opposing the cuts. "That is not moral. That is not American."

Antihunger activists said hunger rates were up for the fifth year in a row, so the cuts were a mistake.

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North Dakota Democrat Earl Pomeroy complained that 40,000 children would lose free meals at school because of that provision.

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USDA said 11.9 percent of households, "at some time during the year, had difficulty providing enough food for all their members due to a lack of resources."

Also, on a related note - a podcast I listened to yesterday from John Edwards talked about the fact that more than a million Americans slipped into poverty in 2004 (ontop of the 35.9 million in 2003).