Rep. Ryan's Hunger Games

huffingtonpost.com — It is fitting that House Budget Committee Chairman Ryan's budget and The Hunger Games were both released in the same week. Both envision a society in which children must truly fight for their very survival. But it would be difficult for even Hollywood to overdramatize the degree to which children in America today are already at risk. More than 20 percent now live below the poverty line and of the 46 million Americans on food stamps, which the Ryan budget proposes to cut by $134 billion over the next decade, nearly half are children. Among children of color the numbers are even worse. Black children are three times as likely to be poor as white children and are nearly four times as likely to live in extreme poverty, which is below half the poverty level. The coming battle over how to cut what is left of the safety net is revealing in four ways.

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