Hunger in the News: Budget Policy Battles

Domestic

Obama to Call for Broad Plan to Reduce Debt.  President Obama will call this week for Republicans to join him in writing a broad plan to raise revenues and reduce the growth of popular entitlement programs …. [The New York Times]

Fiscal War's Next Front: Debt Ceiling. As they work to clear the decks of last year’s spending bills and start the fight over this year’s batch, President Barack Obama and Congress are scrambling to gain a political edge on what has been termed the “Armageddon” of budget policy battles—an increase in the statutory cap on the national debt. [Politico]

Budget Rivals Look to Future of Medicare, Medicaid. As Capitol Hill negotiators fleshed out details of last week's epic budget deal, Democrats and Republicans prepared for the next set of confrontations over federal spending, including the future of Medicare and Medicaid. [The Los Angeles Times]

Food Prices around Boulder, Nation Taking a Bigger Bite from Your Wallet. While the costs of food commodities like potatoes rise and fall throughout the year, the cost of processed foods, like potato chips, are what economists term "sticky"—they're slower to rise, but not as likely to fall once they've risen. [Daily Camera]

Farm Subsidies: Sacred Cows No More. The hunt for cuts has come to this: Even agriculture subsidies—billions in spending both parties have embraced for years—are on the table. With the farm economy booming and Washington on a diet, a program set up in the 1990s that cuts checks to farmers could be trimmed or eliminated next year when Congress writes a new five-year farm bill. [The Wall Street Journal]

Ros-Lehtinen Brings Anti-communist Fervor to Once-Staid Committee. Ros-Lehtinen’s six-year effort to free a man she considered an innocent political prisoner—despite what the Venezuelan courts ruled—was emblematic of her crusading political style. A tough critic of left-wing governments such as Venezuela’s, she believes U.S. leaders should be a voice for freedom and aggressively call out human rights violations. [The Washington Post]

International

Food for Thought. Alistair Wood used to know exactly where his crops would end up. For the last 30 years on his 8,000 acre arable farm in Northern Kenya, he's only found one market at harvest: The local population or their animals. Now his wheat and corn could just as easily be sold onto the world's biofuels market to satisfy the growing demand for energy. [The Wall Street Journal]

Bailout for Portugal Will Put Politicians in a Vise. To secure a bailout worth about €80 billion, Portugal may have to agree to international creditors’ demands that it impose tougher austerity measures than those its own lawmakers rejected less than a month ago. [The New York Times]