The Spark

the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist

“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx

Congress Plans Food Stamp Cuts

May 27, 2013

The U.S. House Agriculture Committee approved 20 billion dollars in cuts to food stamps as part of a new five-year farm bill. The politicians plan to use the savings from the food stamp cuts to maintain federal subsidies for crop insurance.

These outrageous cuts will take food out of the mouths of poor people, for whom food stamps are the biggest form of federal government support following cuts to so many other social programs. Most of the “savings” will go to big corporate farms and to the insurance companies that provide crop insurance.

One of the biggest supporters of the bill, Representative Stephen Fischer smugly stated, “We have to remember there is not a big printing press in Washington that continually prints money over and over. This is other people’s money that Washington is appropriating and spending.” By “other people’s money,” Fischer apparently means “his,” since he received $70,000 in direct payments and an unknown amount of crop insurance subsidies last year alone for his farm in Tennessee, and a total of 3.5 million from 1999 to 2012.

A politician’s hypocrisy knows no bounds when it comes to justifying robbing from the poor to give to the rich.