Paul Ryan's Proposed Cuts To Food Stamps Would Hit Red States Hardest - Tom Laskawy

While cutting food stamps remains atop the Republican agenda, a new Gallup poll reminds us that hunger continues to run rampant in America.   According to a recent Gallup poll, over 18 percent of Americans “say there have been times when they could not afford the food they needed” during the last year. In 15 states, that figure jumps to one in five Americans.

There’s an odd political angle to this poll. The top-10 list for states with the highest hunger rates includes the GOP strongholds of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Louisiana. More than half of those states are as red as they come, i.e. even in a landslide these states wouldn’t back Obama.

A cynic would thus observe the deep irony that Republicans have dubbed Obama the “Food Stamp President,” while the Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, the party’s acknowledged deep-thinking wonk, wants to cut food stamps by $133 billion over the next decade.

The fact that Republicans have utterly abandoned the economic interests of vast swaths of their supporters in favor of policies that tilt toward the rich doesn’t represent irony as far as I’m concerned. Rather, it’s tragedy.

The full article is available here