Congress works on Farm Bill reauthorization this week; they were supposed to reauthorize it last year, but couldn't agree on how much pain they wanted to inflict on America, so the fiscal cliff deal of this past January extended the old Farm Bill for another year. You'd think recent election results would make it harder to do damage with this thing, but both houses of Congress plan to slash food stamps -- the Senate plans some $4 billion in cuts, while the House proposes $20 billion. Last I looked, we were still measuring our annual deficit in trillions, so these cuts will neither accomplish nor demonstrate fiscal responsibility -- but they will hurt some 22 million children who benefit from food stamps. Do our politicos want to rail against the "irresponsibility" and "laziness" of folks who need food stamps? Children comprise almost half the folks on food stamps, and they did nothing to deserve poverty. Hell, given corporations' mania for job-cutting, their parents likely did nothing to deserve it, either. NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, helps you tell Congress not to cut food stamps.

Meanwhile, the Senate takes up S. 601, the Water Resources Development Act, this week, and the bill contains both good works and, well, mischief. The American Rivers link above rates a dozen yet-to-be-considered amendments to S. 601, and you could certainly call your Senators about those. (Postponing flood insurance reform, Sens. Landrieu and Vitter? Didn't your state drown in 2005?). The Sierra Club also helps you tell your Senators to oppose Amendments 846 and 850 from Sen. Manchin (D-WV) that would hamstring the EPA's ability to stop mountaintop removal mining projects from taking a crap in the water table. And American Rivers also helps you tell your Senators to improve Congressional oversight of water-related Army Corps projects. It is our Army, after all; why shouldn't we know what it's doing? Because some fat cat lost money when good Americans got Congress to pull the plug on a bad project? Of course our enemies will translate that last sentence as BECAUSE JOBS THAT'S WHY. But we know better -- our elites only care about their jobs, not ours.