Callous cuts to the poor

sure families have food. That’s humane — the program kept 2.1 million children out of poverty in 2011 by providing food assistance to low-income families — and it’s also fiscally effective: People who aren’t hungry are more productive.

The House bill promises to undercut the food stamp program precisely where it’s most promising. The bill would penalize recipients who have built small savings or who own a modest car, assets known to help people find employment and regain self-sufficiency.

Some 210,000 low-income children also stand to lose free school meals, negating a sensible investment in current learning and future productivity if there ever was one. Benefit cuts for an additional 1.7 million people included in the bill would disproportionately hurt low-income seniors, people with disabilities and working-poor families with children. Over 80 percent of households that receive benefits live below the poverty line.

Some in Congress complain that an expanding food stamp system is ripe for abuse. But in fact, the program has a low and steadily dropping fraud rate, and the vision of impoverished people living lavishly off $1.48 per meal is a mean-spirited fiction. Americans should not starve.

This program deserves to continue, as a matter of moral responsibility and fiscal common sense.

ASSOCIATED PRESS (2010) A sign announces the acceptance of Electronic Benefit Transfer cards at a farmers market in Roseville, Calif. A bill in the House would cut more than $20.5 billion to the federal food stamp program.