MAKE IT MAKE SENSE: What’s really at stake with SNAP

Republicans have been attacking food stamps for decades. What happens when they abandon them altogether?

In today’s letter: What does it mean to live in a country run by a man willing to let 42 million people go hungry just to make a point?

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This week, as the shutdown officially became the longest in American history, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it would, after all, tap emergency accounts to partially fund SNAP benefits through November. Donald Trump objected, of course — who were these welfare queens anyway, to deserve a handout? Just bargaining chips in his war with the Democrats.

Those half measures are back on for now — after all, the government is legally bound to keep funding SNAP even during a shutdown, as the aides who reminded Trump of his obligations realize. But you may have some questions.

What, exactly, is so wrong with a program that keeps 42 million Americans from going hungry and keeps grocery stores and food producers large and small in business? Aren’t those emergency funds there for just this reason? How can the government pay for a ballroom and…let children go hungry?

Let’s make sense of that…