John Lewis was furious. "They're coming for the children. They're coming for the poor. They're coming for the sick, the elderly and the disabled," said the Georgia Democrat. He was speaking in 1996 during the debate over welfare reform that he predicted would "put one million more children into poverty."

The reform passed but none of that happened. The law was an historic success, shrinking the welfare rolls even as its work requirement put more Americans on the road to self-sufficiency. Ron Haskins of the Brooking Institution found that, a decade after the changes, 60% of the adults leaving welfare were employed and child poverty rates fell.

It's worth recalling Mr. Lewis's fear and loathing amid this week's debate over a GOP attempt to impose a few modest reforms on America's exploding food-stamp entitlement. Democrats and the media are predicting a moral catastrophe, with the same over-the-top rhetoric, and they are as wrong now as they were then.

The nearby chart shows the explosion in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) from 2000-2012. The costs keep rising and will be about $83 billion this year, more than double the amount as recently as 2008. One-in-seven Americans, or 47.7 million, now let taxpayers pay for some or all of their grocery bills. That's more than the combined population of California, Oregon and Washington.

You'd expect the rolls to expand during a recession, but note that they are still climbing even in the fifth year of an economic recovery. Never has the program exploded like this. One reason is that the Obama Administration has actively sought to turn food stamps into another middle-class entitlement.