This is one of the most appalling and despicable things I’ve ever read in my life. From the Fiscal Times interview with David Obey, by way of The Washington Independent:

We were told we have to offset every damn dime of [new teacher spending]. Well, it ain’t easy to find offsets, and with all due respect to the administration their first suggestion for offsets was to cut food stamps. Now they were careful not to make an official budget request, because they didn’t want to take the political heat for it, but that was the first trial balloon they sent down here. … Their line of argument was, well, the cost of food relative to what we thought it would be has come down, so people on food stamps are getting a pretty good deal in comparison to what we thought they were going to get. Well isn’t that nice. Some poor bastard is going to get a break for a change.

Yes, that’s right. Rather than cut a sliver out of Arne Duncan’s blackmail fund used to bribe the states into enacting his pet projects, the administration apparently suggested cutting the money that desperate families need to EAT.

I don’t want to hear one goddamned word defending these people anymore. I just don’t. They use shock doctrine tactics to attack public school teachers in a recession, then turn around and try to take food from poor families’ tables to keep dangling prize money over frantic, desperate states who are trying not to lay off what teachers they have left. These monsters make me physically ill.

I hope they all rot in hell. As an atheist, I wish I could believe they would.