Cutting Food Stamps Is Cruel, Says Bob Herbert

Last week, the House Agriculture Committee voted to drastically cut spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by over $33 billion. It's an extreme, absurd, dangerous thing to do, cutting an already underfunded program that is, as Feeding America put it, "one of the nation's most critical, remaining safety net."

The most recent hunger statistics in the U.S. are startling: in 2010, 32.6 million adults and 16.2 million children lived in food insecure households. Bob Herbert put it best on MSNBC's  "Up w/Chris Hayes" this weekend, saying:

What we're talking about here are blantantly cruel proposals. 1 in 5 american children is poor, 1 in 5 African American children is poor, it would be even more if we didn't have the food stamp program. ...As poverty is increasing in the United States at the same time that the rich are getting richer, we're talking about going in and taking food off of the table of poor children?! What is the matter with us??

Check out Herbert's full commentary on SNAP cuts here: