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Food Stamps. With this program's 1982 budget of $12.9 billion snipped by $1.6 billion, some 1 million out of 22.5 million recipients will lose their stamps. Most states will make no attempt to cover the shortfall from local funds. Michigan officials, for example, expect to pare 16,000 from its food-stamp line of 396,000 households, while New York City may shave 68,000 from its roll of 1.1 million.
Comprehensive Employment and Training Act. Though this program must abolish its 300,000 public service jobs by the end of this month, the Labor Department estimates that some 50% of CETA-funded workers have already found other jobs, most with state and local governments. New York City, for example, will shift about 6,000 of its 9,000 employees to the city payroll, at a cost of $78 million.
School Lunches. By cutting the number of students eligible for free and reduced-price lunches, Congress carved about $1.5 billion from this program's $4.7 billion budget. School districts are thus faced with the choice of either hiking prices or slimming down portions; many have already doubled the charge for reduced-price meals to 400. To help cafeterias cope, the Department of Agriculture cooked up new nutritional guidelines that would provide schoolchildren, for example, with 6 oz. of milk instead of 8 oz., and, absurdly, would allow schools to consider ketchup and relish as vegetables.
Already faced with severe cash shortages, the states are less sanguine about being able to absorb a second round of cuts in social services. All but unanimously, officials argue that the slashes will remove the safety net from many whom the President would accept as being "truly needy." Admits Illinois' Mandeville:
"We're getting to the point now that it will begin to hurt."
—By James Kelly. Reported by Jeanne Saddler/Washington, with other U.S. bureaus