What Congress and the Media are Missing in the Food Stamp Debate by Greg Kaufmann

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/06/19-3

To follow the congressional debate about food stamp (SNAP) funding in the Farm Bill—and media coverage of that debate—you would think that the relevant issues are the deficit, rapists on food stamps, waste and abuse and defining our biblical obligation to the poor.

The only thing missing from that conversation is the state of hunger in America today and how we should respond to it.

“A good part of the food stamp debate in Congress and the media is not an evidence-based conversation, it’s fantasy-based,” says Jim Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), a nonprofit organization working to improve public policies to eradicate hunger in the United States.

Weill insists that there is plenty that we know about food stamps that Congress and the media are busy ignoring, including from the government’s own data: a January 2013 Institute of Medicine (IOM)/National Research Council (NRC) report clearly described the inadequacy of SNAP benefits for most people struggling with hunger.

[ruffburr]

1. Lets cut to the chase-

The 1% and RW Repukes want people to work for slave wages with 0 medical or any other benefits or starve and die, These are the goals they hold dear so why would one expect any factual discussion from this or any other "Congressional" Debate.

[Orrex]

2. That's certainly true, but...

there have been plenty on DU willing to mock, condemn and punish the poor for their poverty, and the collective outrage over SNAP-funded soda purchases is always embarrassing.

We could easily fund and expand SNAP and other public assistance programs nationwide if we simply rolled back some of the multibillion-dollar subsidies to huge corporations. Instead, it's easier and more politically expedient to punish the 80-year-old who gets $120 from SNAP each month.

[Nay]

3. There's a lot of money to be made by deliberately missing the point and debating

non-issues.