Unlike Congress, Americans would
rather not see food stamps cut, according to a new poll from Huffington Post/YouGov. Forty percent of those polled said food stamps should be cut, but 24 percent wanted the amount spent to stay the same and another 24 percent said said they'd like to see the program increased. The partisan breakdown is ... predictable, with 73 percent of Republicans and only 19 percent of Democrats favoring food stamp cuts.
Congress, meanwhile, is ready to cut cut cut, with the big debate between the Republican-controlled House and the Democrat-controlled Senate being in how deeply to slash. The House in particular wants to target working poor people. And while there's something tempting about cutting off some of the taxpayer subsidies for Walmart's low wages, the big problem here is that if you take away the government assistance people rely on to survive without making their employers pay enough for them to live on, they suffer. That may not be any particular concern to Republicans, but children going hungry is the sort of thing that, in the end, voters don't really like to see happening.
The way Republicans win support for cuts to food aid is by focusing on the total amounts being spent on the program, which is large. But people trying to decide if they support nutritional assistance need to realize we're talking here about school lunches and people who work but are paid a poverty wage. More people may want to keep food stamp funding the same or increase it, but 40 percent support for cuts is still too damn high.