Enact a modest expansion of the food stamp program.
Food stamps are the purest and most fundamental of the federal programs for the poor.
To qualify for other aid, a person needs to be elderly or disabled, or sick, or the parent of a dependent child. An applicant for food stamps need only be poor. The figure has declined by about a fourth. The most important of the changes sponsored by Mr. Walsh may be an increase in aid to families with high shelter costs. For years elderly families got enough extra stamps to offset such costs, but families with children, meaning mostly welfare mothers, got only a partial offset.