"Let 'Em Eat Cake," Says the Tea Party

If watchers saw “The Hunger Games” as fantasy, Washington politicians are working hard to turn it into a reality show.

Tom Colicchio, head judge of TV’s “Top Chef,” notes that “if Congress manages to cut $20 to $40 billion” from food stamps, “there’s no way charity can make that up. All the fund-raisers in the world are not going to get back to that number. Are we O.K. with people starving in the streets?”

He is a board member of Food Policy Action, a group to “support healthy diets, reduce hunger at home and abroad, improve food access and affordability,” among other goals, that now rates members of Congress on how they vote on such issues.

Not surprisingly, members of the Tea Party fill the ranks of those who agree with Marie Antoinette before the French Revolution that, if people have no bread, “Let 'em eat cake.” If voters are paying attention, they may want to sharpen guillotines for the November 2014 balloting.

Nobody’s perfect, but Ohio Rep. Steve Stivers managed to score zero on averting starvation, while Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt and Kansas Congressman Mike Pompeo were in single digits.

Not only are Americans going hungry in the richest country history has ever known but cheap nutrition among the poorest is contributing to bad health for the future, with rising numbers of elementary school children suffering from high blood pressure, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, even gallstones.

So we have the spectacle of feckless politicians devouring the welfare of future generations in every way possible. Only the Obamas are lobbying for their health.

Can we really stomach that?