It was bad enough that Republicans from Newt Gingrich on down derided Barack Obama as the “food stamp President” during the last campaign.

Now they’re trying to take food stamps out of the hands of the hungry.

On Wednesday, the House Ag Committee voted to cut $21 billion out of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

The cuts would yank food stamps away from 2 million people, and get this: 200,000 poor and hungry kids would no longer able to get free school lunches.

Republicans spin stories like Ronald Reagan used to, saying that lottery winners shouldn’t have access to food stamps. I doubt there are many lottery winners getting this benefit.

They also say that we need to cut food stamps to reduce the budget deficit.

First, the deficit isn’t the problem they make it out to be.

And second, food stamps are a tiny, tiny portion of federal expenditures.

And third, the poor and the hungry shouldn’t have to suffer because of Wall Street’s excesses and George Bush’s wars.

If Republicans wanted to make reasonable cuts out of the Farm Bill, they should have gone after corporate welfare to the giant food companies.

But no, they’d rather take a poor kid’s meal away.