Food stamp cuts and the liberal Democrat myth

I don't have time to write in detail on this issue, but I don't want to ignore it, either.

The Associated Press described the ultimate deal as having “a mostly symbolic cut in food stamps.” Is that accurate?

It’s not accurate, and shows you in a few words virtually everything wrong with the American media today. It shows you class bias, reporters listing as a fact something that’s an opinion, it shows you lack of empathy.

If the reporter’s own mother was losing $90 of foods a month out of an already-meager allotment, or the reporter’s son or daughter, I very much doubt that reporter would describe that loss as merely symbolic. I don’t know that reporter thinks their own breakfast, their own lunch, or their own dinner is merely symbolic. This is real money coming out of the grocery carts of real families.

Long story short: the Democrats proposed cutting food stamps by $4 billion over ten years. The Republicans proposed cutting food stamps by $20 billion over ten years. The compromise was cutting food stamps by $8 billion over ten years, while increasing farm subsidies for huge (already profitable) agribusiness corporations by $15 billion.



A liberal political party would have tried to prevent any food stamp cuts from occurring. But the Democrats are not liberals. The debate was over how many billions should be taken away from food stamps, and how many billions of additional corporate welfare should be given to agribusiness. The myth of the liberal Democrat is growing increasingly thin.