Food stamps will get cut by $5 billion this week — and more cuts could follow
▻http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/28/food-stamps-will-get-cut-by-5-billion-this-week-and-more-cuts-could-
Un impact important sur le plan humain mais négligeable sur le plan économie budgétaire, ▻http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/why-npr-is-not-the-new-york-times-really-big-numbers-on-food-stamps
it is just awful reporting on NPR’s part when it tells listeners about a $5 billion cut to food stamps this year or a Republican proposal to cut benefits by $40 billion over the next decade.
This provides no information whatsoever to the overwhelming majority of NPR’s listeners. On the other hand, it would be informative to tell listeners about a cut to food stamps equal to 0.14 percent of the budget this year and the Republican proposal to cut benefits by an amount equal to 0.09 percent of projected spending over the next decade. (Both numbers immediately available through use of CEPR’s extraordinary Responsible Budget Calculator.)
The key point that many NPR listeners likely missed is that these cuts could be a big deal for food stamp beneficiaries, but they are trivial in terms of total federal spending. Many NPR listeners may wrongly been led to believe that the decision on these cuts will have a substantial impact on the budget and the deficit.