Hunger and starvation is no excuse to welch sponge off the Federal Government.
That's the Republican response, in any event, to how to deal with the budget deficit. While Republicans defend billions of dollars in subsidies for Big Oil and propose further tax cuts for the wealthy, they see food aid for hungry people here and around the world as a bad idea. Bug Guvmint should get out of the business of keeping people from starving. Now isn't that special:
WASHINGTON -- House Republicans are targeting domestic nutrition programs and international food assistance as they try to control spending in next year's budget.
In a bill released Monday, Republicans proposed cutting $832 million - 11 percent from this year's budget for the Women, Infants and Children program, which provides food for low-income mothers and children. The 2012 budget proposal for food and farm programs also includes a decrease of almost $457 million, or 23 percent, from international food assistance.
The legislation would cut $2 billion from food stamps, or about 2 percent of the feeding program's giant $67 billion budget.
Of course, Republicans claim that this is all wasted money and that cutting it would have "no effect" on the actual delivery of services for poor, underfed, malnourished people. Please excuse me if I don't trust the word of the same folks who:
What can I say? I'm a bit paranoid when Republicans claim that cutting essential services like -- oh say, like funds for the National Weather Service and FEMA -- wouldn't put people at risk.
Here's what some non-Republicans have to say about these proposed cuts:
Hunger advocates have warned against stripping those programs of those reserves. Two analysts from the liberal research and advocacy group Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Zoe Neuberger and Robert Greenstein, said Monday that the cuts could mean turning away as many as 475,000 people from the Women, Infants and Children program if food prices continue to rise. [...]
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said the GOP budget "rolls back years of progress."
"This budget threatens the health and security of American families, while asking the most of low-income seniors and the most vulnerable among us," she said.
Here's the GOP agenda in a nutshell: Anything Government does that helps people and saves lives should be eliminated. That is, Public Schools, Social Security, Medicare, Disaster Relief, etc., etc. etc., need to be eradicated and their ashes spread tossed into the sea, but anything that helps private business and rich people rip off the American taxpayers (fraud and abuse in government contracts, wasteful defense spending, tax cuts for the top 1% of Americans, et alia) should be promoted and increased until the Middle Class has a waist size roughly equivalent to that of a person in end stage anorexia.
So cutting funds for food for hungry people? Yeah, that's Soooooo Republican.
