I will have to plead guilty to gleaning information from a sound bite.
Every MSM news source that I heard stated that the budget bill for 2006 was cutting food stamps. The blogs that I read supported that statement. And so, I did a little searching (not as much as I'd like, but as much as time reasonably allowed).
See, what the budget does is changes ELIGIBILITY requirements. That's a horse of an entirely different color.
The thing is, cutting eligibility requirements would mean that those at the top end of the scale would be losing their eligibility. So I decided to do a little fact finding here.
The federal standards that I found put the gross earnings limit for a single person at $1,037. If you cut that by even ten percent, the gross earnings limit would still be at $934. That sounds low until you consider that: a) it's ONE person, and , an individual working at minimum wage, 160 hours per month, would STILL be under the cap and qualify. It's also important to note that most social security recipients would still qualify.
For a family of four, the cap is $2097. Now, I grant you, that's not a fortune, but again using the hypothetical cut of ten percent, you're still at over $1800. Two wage earners at minimum wage would still put you under the cap.
Without reviewing the budget proposal, however, I am willing to wager a fair sum of money that my radical cut of ten percent was not introduced, but more likely, a freezing of the scale at current levels, with no adjustment for cost of living. This, in the minds of more liberal minded economists, constitutes a "cut". But as I've already illustrated, even with current levels, there's still room to be cut to accomodate minimum wage earners under the cap.
As long as the MSM insists on perpetuating gross lies like this, we will never see the kinds of meaningful reform that will bring our budget back to manageable levels. As for the "hard stats", I would appreciate seeing them, if anyone has them or cares to do the research.
(source for USDA income guidelines: Link )