June 21, 2018
No, they would never attribute such motives to political actors, but for some reason, the paper feels it can tell us that they want to separate the food stamp program from agricultural appropriations “in hopes of cutting costs.” While it is certainly possible that the motives of the Koch-related entities referred to in this piece is really to save the government money, there are reasons for questioning this view.
The government is projected to spend $73 billion on the food stamp program this year, or 1.7 percent of total spending. Even large cuts to this program would have only limited effects on the federal budget. These Koch-related entities have mostly been little troubled by the $716 billion that the federal government will spend on the military this year. They also seem little troubled by privatizing public services like prisons, or student loan debt collection, which both have been shown to raise costs.
On the other hand, we know that many people get enraged over spending on programs like food stamps, with the idea that the beneficiaries are all African American and Hispanic, and that a large portion of there tax bill is going to them. Many Republican politicians have sought to highlight spending on such programs in election campaigns, so it is certainly plausible that the Koch-related entities want to make this process easier for their political allies.
The best solution here is to not ascribe motives, which the NYT reporters do not know. This is supposed to be the policy of the paper (it will not say that Donald Trump “lied,” but for some reason, it seems unable to practice it consistently).
The piece also refers to the “$3 billion Community Development Block Grant Program.” For those not very familiar with the federal budget (i.e. 99.9 percent of NYT readers) this program costs us a bit less than 0.07 percent of the federal budget.
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