A story from Friday I neglected to link....

More than 100,000 low-income families could lose their rent subsidies next year under a spending bill passed today by a Senate committee and recently approved by the House, housing advocates said.

The advocates cited a new study by the Congressional Budget Office.

If the nonpartisan budget office's forecast of housing costs next year proves accurate, it could be the first time in the 30-year history of the federal housing voucher program that Congress has failed to renew all existing vouchers. Under the program, known as Section 8, the vouchers pay the difference between the market rent of an apartment and 30 percent of a household's income....

To ensure that all vouchers were paid for, Congress has in previous years often appropriated more money than necessary. This year, Congress changed the financing to focus on the target of vouchers more closely. The new formula requires an extremely accurate prediction of costs to keep all vouchers renewed....

--New York Times

Look, I'm sure there are conservatives who can make eloquent arguments for cutting this program back or even eliminating it altogether. If so, they should step up to the microphone and explain why it's good for the country to throw widows and orphans out on the street. Instead, the White House and the GOP Congress are changing course after three decades, yet they're claiming not to be ("At the present time," an assistant housing secretary says, disingenuously, "we believe what has been allocated will be sufficient to take care of the number of vouchers we have"). It's cruel, but it's standard operating procedure for these guys, isn't it?