There's a Lot of Protein in Shoe Leather

From APAF's Under the Radar comes this:

BUDGET -- CONSERVATIVES PLAN TO CUT 300,000 POOR FROM FEDERAL FOOD PROGRAMS: Conservatives in Congress are planning to cut $574 million from food programs for the poor. Earlier this year, Congress passed a budget framework that called for $3 billion in agriculture spending cuts. "Leading Republicans indicated they would rather target food stamps and conservation programs than simply make the deep cuts [in farmers' payments] that Bush was seeking." The $574 million cut in food stamps, brought on primarily because Bush's irresponsible tax cuts have exacerbated the nation's deficit, would come from restricting access to this benefit for certain families that receive other government assistance. The restriction would shut an estimated 300,000 people out of the program. Gerry Roll writes in the Christian Science Monitor, "We can keep our food stamp program intact. It just might mean putting big corporate farmers on a thrifty food plan."

And just for those conservatives who splash by this blog on their way upstream let me explicitly post the dilemna as the Christian Science Monitor succinctly puts it:

Very soon, the Senate is scheduled to make some difficult choices about how the nation spends its agriculture dollars - a mandate to cut $3 billion in the agriculture budget over the next five years will force reductions in some programs. In my state, that decision boils down to whether four big farmers will have to suffer with a $250,000 cap on their government subsidy or half a million people will have to quit eating. The real problem is that we are actually considering the latter.

The food stamp program gives 544,744 Kentuckians access to enough money to adhere to a "thrifty food plan." For a family of four, that equals $471 a month - about $1.31 per meal per person. I wish whoever developed the plan did the grocery shopping at my house. Most of the recipients are from working families, and food stamps subsidize their grocery budget and allow them to balance precariously housing, healthcare, child care, transportation, and other minor life crises that come their way.

Please, conservative readers. You seem to have the skinny on who the dead wood on the cutting end of such 'reform' should be. Who decides what should get cut? Let's see, will it be a calculation that asks 'Why can't a family that can afford a car do without food stamps?' or something else, less likely to affect Big Bidness...

Hell, it's Kentucky. I guess shoes could go...oh wait, there's a lot of protein in shoe leather.