A David Brooks column in the Times calls for a return to the Reagan era. "in the 1980s, when conservatism was at its most politically and intellectually vibrant, the dominant voices in the movement celebrated Lincoln, the Progressive Era and even the New Deal...In recent years, people like Kristol, Wilson and Reagan have been celebrated even though many of their ideas could no longer get a hearing in many conservative precincts. The Republican Party is drifting back to a place where it appears hostile to the basic pillars of the welfare state: to food stamps, for example."
This idea that Ronald Reagan was some kind of champion of food stamps, and that the Republicans of today are betraying the Reagan legacy by opposing the program's runaway expansion, is unfounded in historical fact.
Here is a New York Times headline from November 1981: "Reagan Weighs Plan to Cut Food Stamps Fund Even More."
Here is a passage from Reagan's January 1982 State of the Union address to Congress: "Virtually every American who shops in a local supermarket is aware of the daily abuses that take place in the food stamp program, which has grown by 16,000 percent in the last 15 years."