my libertarian-leaning republican friends answer to foodstamps

[Tanuki]

37. +1000 We would go back to a not-so recent time of rampant malnutrition

in places like Mississippi and West Virginia. There was a famous CBS documentary on "Hunger in America" in 1968 that shocked the public into re-establishing the federal food stamp program.
http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe50s/money_09.html

..."In 1960, John F. Kennedy was campaigning for the Democratic Party's nomination for President and West Virginia was a key battleground primary. Kennedy campaigned tirelessly and talked with hundreds of poor coal miners and workers. As Ted Sorensen, Kennedy's speech writer, says in his book Kennedy –

"He was appalled by the pitiful conditions he saw, by the children of poverty, by the families living on surplus lard and corn meal, by the waste of human resources… He called for better housing and better schools and better food distribution… He held up a skimpy surplus food package and cited real-life cases of distress."

Kennedy won that primary, his party's nomination and the Presidency all the slimmest of margins. He never forgot his experience in West Virginia.

Kennedy was inaugurated in January 1961, and he promised an optimistic future despite the fact that there was a troubling recession going on and surplus farm products piling up in government storage bins. Not content to wait for Congress, his first Executive Order in February (among many other things) re-instituted a "pilot" food stamp program based on the Depression-era model.

After Kennedy's assassination, President Johnson requested Congress to make the program permanent. They did in 1964. Congress estimated that the program might serve only four million people, but it grew quickly.
......

But despite the phenomenal growth, the need proved to be greater. In 1968, CBS news aired a documentary titled "Hunger in America" that found severe cases of malnutrition in kids. That program caught the attention of Democratic Sen. George McGovern and Republican Sen. Bob Dole. They got the Senate to form a special committee to study the system. Gradually they pushed through reforms.

In 1974, Food Stamps became a nationwide program, and by July of that year 14 million people a month were participating.

Finally, in 1977, a major revision was pushed through with the support of President Jimmie Carter. The 1977 program finally allowed the poorest of the poor to be given food stamps instead of having to pay for them. The program greatly expanded the number of people who were eligible while still cracking down on fraud.

Over the years, the program has been re-authorized, expanded and contracted depending on the political powers and the state of the economy. Supporters of the Food Stamp Program include a mixture of farm lobbying groups, labor unions and advocates for the poor. "........