SNAP!

CNN has a nice feature on food stamps. And they have one of their hosts of American Morning blogging his experience living on under $200 for the next month. They should certainly be applauded for shining light on the issue. But there are a few things I wish they had done different.

First, the feature article seems to only interview African Americans in Washington DC. Would have been nice for them to get out to suburbs and rural areas and show a little more diverse portrait.

The second thing is that while the experiment adds for some interesting - albeit predictable - commentary, I would rather see one of CNN's host's make their whole family live at food stamp levels. Now, that would never happen because no one would ever want to subject their young kids to having to skip meals or eat junk just to get calories. Why? Because the biggest cost of food stamp stinginess is its toll on child development, which has long term impact.

The last thing that would be nice would be for them to use the feature to put some context around their stimulus bill coverage. When the Nelson-Collins deal cut a few billion for SNAP that is something that has real consequences. It would be nice for someone to move beyond the "bipartisan" and "moderate" rhetoric and talk about the substance. Like "Instead of providing families living below the poverty line an extra $30/month to deal with rising food prices, the new Senate bill will provide people doing well enough to buy a new car with a $2,500 tax cut." Then again, I have a feeling I know which of those groups most CNN producers are in.