Discussion of the House Republican budget has focused mostly on the transformation of three big health care programs: Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act. And that’s appropriate, given the magnitude of the changes and widespread impact they would have. But those proposals are obscuring some other proposed shifts that, in any other context, would be plenty troubling for their own sake. This week I'll highlight five of them. Here's the first.

The food stamp program isn't called food stamps anymore. It's called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. And the stamps no longer come in the form of colored paper coupons. Now they are virtual stamps, loaded onto electronic debit cards. But the program serves the same essential purpose it always did: Helping poor people to pay for food.

The Republican budget would make two changes to the program. First, it would transform SNAP from an entitlement to a block-grant. Instead of an open-ended federal commitment to the program, guaranteeing benefits for any Americans that meets the eligibility guidelines, the federal government would simply give the states an allotment of money, set by a pre-determined formula. It's the same change Republicans propose for Medicaid and, as with that program, the shift is no minor thing.

Today, spending on SNAP automatically rises during economic downturns, as more people lose jobs or see incomes fall. Not only does that automatic expansion help alleviate hardship. It also boosts the economy. In fact, most experts consider government food assistance among the quickest, most effective forms of economic stimulus. As the Wall Street Journal noted in July, 2009, near the peak of the recession: