No 'Sophie's choice'

The House is scheduled to vote today on emergency legislation that would save the jobs of teachers nationwide, including 5,000 in Ohio, and help recession-battered states such as Ohio and Michigan address shortfalls in their Medicaid budgets. These goals are urgent, but the method used by the Senate to pay for the $26.1 billion measure - cutting future food stamp benefits - is unacceptably cynical.

House leaders and Obama Administration officials should reject this ploy, compared by a House member to "Sophie's choice" - a reference to the classic novel in which a woman is forced to condemn one of her two children to death. Instead, Congress and the White House should restore the food stamp funding, if not in this bill, then with an ironclad commitment in future legislation.

Certainly districts such as the Toledo Public Schools, which eliminated one of every 10 teaching positions in June, can use federal help to avoid further teacher layoffs. This assumes, of course, that TPS would use the aid for that purpose, rather than maintain or increase the wages and benefits of some current school employees while targeting others for pink slips.

Ohio's Medicaid program provides health care for 2.1 million poor and disabled residents, including almost one-third of the state's children. Medicaid accounts for more than one-fourth of the state budget, which faces a potential $8 billion deficit next year.

The state's Medicaid rolls have surged by 9 percent in the past year - the product of the same recession that is depriving the state of revenues to meet its obligations. While state officials work to contain Medicaid costs, the federal money in the bill will help keep the program solvent.

But the food stamp program, which serves the hungriest Ohioans, is no less vital. It serves 1.8 million people in our state, nearly one of every six; the average benefit here is $140 a month. Nationwide, enrollment in the program rose from about 31 million Americans to more than 38 million in just the past year.

The bill before the House would roll back an increase in food-stamp benefits, which amounts to about $50 a month for a family of three, that was approved in last year's stimulus spending. The benefits cut would take effect in 2014.

Senate Democrats accepted the trade-off as a way to move the new stimulus bill in the face of Republican demands that it not add to the federal deficit. Senate leaders pledged to work to "fix" their mistake later.

That promise must be kept. House leaders and President Obama want to pass the bill quickly, rather than wait for the Senate to return next month from its summer recess to repair the bill. But they need to say now how they will restore the food stamp cuts.

Otherwise, Washington will effectively force taxpayers to choose between healthier, better educated children now and hungry ones down the road. That's no choice at all.