Portside

Hiroshima, Nagasaki and “Oppenheimer”

While Republicans threaten to bring the government to a halt, Democrats are caving in to the austerity measures they demand.

"I don't think people understand how much impact this relief had. I was finally able to feed my child without the stress, without the worry, or the tears."

The jump in benefits, the biggest in the program’s history, comes after a revision of the initiative’s nutrition standards that supporters say will reduce hunger and better reflect how Americans eat.

With one of five American families living with food insecurity, the new executive orders are greeted as 'the most significant anti-hunger actions in modern times.'

Right now, government money is flowing. But soon the self-appointed guardians of “fiscal responsibility” will call for cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and SNAP, while leaving the defense budget and large tax breaks for the wealthy intact.

Republicans defend cuts to food stamps by saying that keeping people hungry will make them work harder. But we know this is just about cruelty

The latest budget proposal calls for reducing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) outlays by $200 billion over the next decade and replacing about half of the aid delivered through this mainstay of the American safety net with what it’s calling “harvest boxes” of nonperishable items like pasta, canned meat and peanut butter. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue says this new approach would cut costs and give states, which administer the SNAP program, “flexibility.”

The President's budget is a reflection of the administration's priorities. And this administration and their GOP co-horts in Congress want to slash over a trillion dollars with cuts to programs for some of the nation's most vulnerable. A massive increase in the military budget and war preparations comes at the expense of slashing all kinds of social programs.