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In order to help pay for a series of high-priority spending bills in 2010, congressional Democrats raided future funding for food stamps, promising to put the money back before any cuts took effect.

Now that the cuts are around the corner, Democrats aren't talking about replacing the money. Instead, they're talking about more cuts. The big farm bill that passed the Senate on Thursday will reduce the deficit by $23.6 billion. Part of the savings comes from cutting an additional $4.5 billion from food stamps.

Democratic support for cutting food stamps -- formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP -- is a measure of how attitudes toward safety-net spending have changed over the past few years in Washington. It's also representative of how repeated Republican attacks on the program, in Congress and during the presidential campaign, have made it more vulnerable to cuts as its cost continues to increase.

With the average household receiving $287 per month, participation in the SNAP program has increased 70 percent since 2007, but is expected to level off in 2014, according to the Congressional Budget Office. States can make their own rules, but the minimum standard requires recipient households to have no more than $2,000 in assets, and incomes no greater than 130 percent of the federal poverty line, which is currently $23,050 per year for a family of four.

Even without the cuts in the farm bill, SNAP beneficiaries will see less money come in, starting fall 2013. The Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger advocacy group, estimated that a family of four will receive $16 less per month starting in November 2013. (Thanks to food price inflation, the reduction is less severe than once expected -- in 2010, FRAC estimated benefits would shrink $59 a month).

The $4.5 billion cut in the farm bill is similar to a provision from a Republican proposal in the House. That measure targeted a program known as "Heat and Eat," which Republicans say is a loophole. "Heat and Eat" states can send nominal utility assistance checks as low as $1 to needy households, which in turn automatically qualifies them for a boosted utility allowance under SNAP. Fewer states would participate in "Heat and Eat" under the farm bill, because it will require them to send utility assistance checks worth at least $10 for the recipient household to get a SNAP boost. Huffington Post

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