One of those teachable moments

John Boehner's bad day

For those who aren’t quite clear on what’s at issue between the two parties, Georgia Logothetis at KOS has this quoted from an NYT editorial about the failure of the farm bill.

Mr. Boehner was unable to win support from 62 Republicans on the party’s conservative fringe, who cast no votes because they believed the $20.5 billion cut in the food stamps program did not go deep enough.

Nearly all Democrats also voted no because that draconian cut would have eliminated food assistance for nearly two million people.

It appears some Democrats, who might have voted for the House bill, were repelled by a last-minute Republican amendment that added a punitive work requirement to food stamp eligibility rules.

That came on top of an offensive amendment Republicans pushed through on Wednesday to authorize states to conduct drug testing of food stamp applicants, despite studies showing they are no more likely than nonbeneficiaries to be using drugs.

People change their opinions about lots of things as they go through life, sometimes moving in circles among a small set of alternatives repeatedly adopted and abandoned, perhaps even in the same order.

But I have been on the right side of issues like these all along, with perhaps a few insignificant, brief, and rare lapses.

And the Times has always been the best paper in the country, not only for its intelligent news coverage but also for its reliable humanity.

She also quotes the L A Times editorial board, also for the party of humanity.

"The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat," Rep. Stephen Fincher (R-Tenn.) said in quoting the Bible last month of the 48 million hungry Americans, mostly working families and senior citizens, who require federal help to put food on the table. 

That misguided principle stands at the center of a House farm bill that threatens $20.5 billion in cuts over a decade to food stamps, officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. 

Pursuing the sacred cause of deficit reduction, Congress would sooner shrink aid to struggling families than substantially reform farm subsidies, of which Fincher, who owns a family cotton farm, is one of the largest recipients in Tennessee history.

Update, 062213 at 1029 hrs EDT.

On the other hand, the regime of farm subsidies is part of a large package of New Deal and post-New Deal creations that were aimed at creating a stable and reliable supply of cheap and healthy food for all Americans, most especially the most down-and-out. 

Why have liberals almost to a man turned against it?

Because American cheap food keeps out the more expensive products of Mexicans and other, poorer foreign producers, to whom cosmolibs - soi-disant "cosmopolitan liberals" - say we morally owe the business, in preference to our own producers and our own consumers.

Perhaps they think the impact on poor Americans can be mitigated by means-tested, direct aid programs like SNAP (food stamps), though they usually dislike means testing.

How's that working out?