To the editor: This past week, Scrooge McTrump reached a new low of callousness by proposed changes to the food stamp program that could leave nearly 500,000 children without access to free school lunches. Obviously Trump and his wealthy associates do not care whether American children get something to eat during the school day. As a former teacher, I know how important breakfast and lunch programs are to hungry children. For many children school lunches are the only food they will receive in a day. In the richest and most overfed country in the world, how can the administration justify saving money by not feeding kids? The proposed changes in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP benefits, also known as food stamps, could result in 3 million people losing their food assistance. Proponents of the current system point out that it “helps low-income families who have work but have huge child care, housing, and other expenses that leave them with insufficient money to buy food aid.” Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue estimates that these changes, at the expense of the poor, could save the government $2.5 billion a year. Oh good, more money for trips at taxpayers’ expense to Mar-a-Lago and other Trump properties and for campaign rallies. Also, this past week, the White House announced that the G-7 Summit in June of next year will be at Trump’s Doral Resort near Miami. Attempting to justify this decision, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said this was “by far and away, far and away, the best physical facility for this meeting.” Interestingly enough but really not surprising, the Doral resort had been losing money. I say the choice is not surprising considering the fact, that in the history of the United States, no other president has “actively used the power and prestige of his office to line his own pockets: landing loans for his businesses, steering wealthy buyers to his condos, securing cheap foreign labor [often illegal immigrants] for his resorts, preserving federal subsidies for his housing projects, easing regulations on his golf courses, licensing his name for overseas projects, even peddling coffee mugs, and shot glasses bearing the presidential seal. How crass is that? Mary Kathryn Gepner Benton

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To the editor:
This past week, Scrooge McTrump reached a new low of callousness by proposed changes to the food stamp program that could leave nearly 500,000 children without access to free school lunches.
Obviously Trump and his wealthy associates do not care whether American children get something to eat during the school day.
As a former teacher, I know how important breakfast and lunch programs are to hungry children. For many children school lunches are the only food they will receive in a day.
In the richest and most overfed country in the world, how can the administration justify saving money by not feeding kids?
The proposed changes in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP benefits, also known as food stamps, could result in 3 million people losing their food assistance.
Proponents of the current system point out that it “helps low-income families who have work but have huge child care, housing, and other expenses that leave them with insufficient money to buy food aid.”
Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue estimates that these changes, at the expense of the poor, could save the government $2.5 billion a year.
Oh good, more money for trips at taxpayers’ expense to Mar-a-Lago and other Trump properties and for campaign rallies.
Also, this past week, the White House announced that the G-7 Summit in June of next year will be at Trump’s Doral Resort near Miami. Attempting to justify this decision, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said this was “by far and away, far and away, the best physical facility for this meeting.”
Interestingly enough but really not surprising, the Doral resort had been losing money.
I say the choice is not surprising considering the fact, that in the history of the United States, no other president has “actively used the power and prestige of his office to line his own pockets: landing loans for his  businesses, steering wealthy buyers to his condos, securing cheap foreign labor [often illegal immigrants] for his resorts, preserving federal subsidies for his housing projects, easing regulations on his golf courses, licensing his name for overseas projects, even peddling coffee mugs, and shot glasses bearing the presidential seal.
How crass is that?
Mary Kathryn
Gepner
Benton