The GOP Plan To Preserve Military Spending By Slashing Food Stamps
WASHINGTON -- The latest Republican plan to reconcile the budget and preserve defense spending extracts even deeper cuts from programs to help the poor and Americans still reeling from the recession.
Although spending levels for the budget were set in the Budget Control Act passed last summer in the deal to raise the nation's debt limit, Republicans are pushing ahead with another plan that cuts more while trying to prevent the beginning of $600 billion in cuts over 10 years to the growth of the defense budget.
They are doing so because the Super Committee, which was supposed to find $1.2 trillion in cuts on which everyone could agree, failed, leaving the slashing up to a pre-agreed sequestration plan that extracts half the savings from the military.
Advocates for the poor, see the cuts not only as an attack on poor people, but as extremely short-sighted. A key reason that advocates have pushed broad-based eligibility for years is that it cuts down on overlapping workloads for the administering agencies, and helps get people -- especially the working poor -- access to aid that they deserve under law. That aid often becomes inaccessible to people who don't have the time or knowledge to deal with multiple bureaucracies.
With defense spending continuing to grow, advocates for the poor, like Dean, see something else in deep cuts aimed at the less fortunate.
"We believe the Ryan budget is an assault on the safety net," she said.
Kind of hard to get away from it...After 8 years of Bush's "compassionate conservatism", and his destruction of the economy, the support system for the poor while giving his rich buddies tax-cuts, it's hard not to...
LadyJazzer wrote: Kind of hard to get away from it...After 8 years of Bush's "compassionate conservatism", and his destruction of the economy, the support system for the poor while giving his rich buddies tax-cuts, it's hard not to...
Here's hopin for 4 more years of conservitism for you to complain about.
"Whatever you are, be a good one." ~ Abraham Lincoln
Why do we need foodstamps, didn't Obama promise to bring unemployment down? Oh wait, he has increased the amount of people on food stamps to record levels. Sure, go ahead and slash the military so we can increase food stamp fraud. Is it still $0.50 on the dollar to trade the cards out for booze?
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
This sounds like a great idea that I can support 100%.
Look - if the military is going to turn all that drone technology into domestic civillian surveillance use - and eventually use them to hunt us down and shoot us- the military is going to need all the money it can get.
Why not use some of that food stamp money? I mean, they are just borrowing it anyway. We got like 40 million looters on food stamps now, and if they can all get by with $10- maybe $20 less per week then we can fully fund all the military projects that Obama wants.
$20 bucks per week is only like 3 six-packs of beer- or 1/3 of a carton of smokes- or a few less bong hits per week.
And hey- if they really want the $20 bucks back- they could try working for it!
