The House Agriculture Committee approved a farm bill late Wednesday night that would cut federal food stamps more steeply than any legislation since the welfare reforms of the 1990s. A Democratic amendment to strip $20.5 billion in Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) cuts was defeated by a 27-17 vote, after more than an hour of debate.

In introducing the amendment to protect SNAP funding, Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern (MA) noted that cutting food stamps comes with many expensive unintended consequences – hunger undermines worker productivity, and malnutrition increases medical costs – and that every dollar of spending returns much more than a dollar of economic output. In response, Republican Rep. Steve King (IA) alleged that the White House is seeking to swell the SNAP rolls in order to make Americans more dependent on government:

REP. KING: Handing out benefits is not an economic stimulator. But we wanna take care of the people that are needy, the people that’re hungry, and we’ve watched this program grow from a number that I think I first memorized when I arrived here in Congress, about 19 million people, now about 49 million people. And it appears to me that the goal of this administration is to expand the rolls of people that’re on SNAP benefits. And their purpose for doing so in part is because of what the gentleman has said from Massachusetts. Another purpose for that though is just to simply expand the dependency class.

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But the reality for SNAP recipients is far from King’s image of a “dependency class.” The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains that “only 4 percent that worked in the year before starting to receive SNAP did not work in the following year,” and adds that the raw total of recipients who work while enrolled in the program has tripled since 2000.

The think tank also notes that SNAP’s role as an unusually efficient stimulative multiplier is backed by Moody’s Analytics and the Congressional Budget Office.

Furthermore, the program keeps hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Americans out of the deepest pits of poverty, and even as the Great Recession swelled SNAP rolls, the program continued to push its erroneous payments rates to record lows:

Two of the Democrats on the Agriculture Committee — Ranking Member Collin Peterson (MN) and Rep. Mike McIntyre (NC) — joined Republicans in supporting the cuts, which will cause two million people to lose their benefits.

Joining other Republicans who trumpet automatic, across-the-board cuts to preschool, education, unemployment benefits, and health services, House Judiciary Chair Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) said sequestration is “a legitimate effort” to implement budget cuts in a Wednesday address to the Ripon Society:

[There are] a whole array of other issues including the profligate waste in all sectors of the government as the administration attempts to vilify sequestration, a legitimate effort to cut 2.5 percent of the entire federal budget or about 7-8 percent of domestic and defense discretionary spending. At a time when the Department as purchased a new prison at a cost of $170 million when we have four new prisons all standing empty, and at a time when they are having $12 cups of coffee and $10,000 dollars pizza parties. So there will be questions there about why it is necessary to put deportable aliens, many of them criminal aliens, out on the street to save money where they can commit crimes against citizens of the U.S.

Goodlatte has expressed selective outrage over the budget cuts affecting immigration enforcement and airports. However, his home state Virginia will lose millions for primary and secondary education, affecting hundreds of teachers and 14,000 students, nearly $3 million for clean air and water services, child care for 400 children, vaccine services for more than 3,500 children, and much more. The Huffington Post also outlined 100 ways the sequester is hurting local communities across the country. But Goodlatte has zeroed in on the release of non-violent immigrants, who can be tracked through cheaper methods than detention at the cost of $164 a day.

This represents a marked change in the GOP’s tone on the sequester and a shift to blame the White House after forcing the sequester agreement in the first place. Reps. Mike Pompeo (R-KS), Raul Labrador (R-ID), and Blake Farenthold (R-TX) have downplayed how budget cuts have hurt everyday Americans to instead claim it is “working.”

More than four-in-five of fast food workers in New York City say they have been victims of wage theft or work hour abuse at their jobs, according to a survey released today from Fast Food Forward, an advocacy group that has been aligned with striking restaurant workers across the city.

Workers at New York City fast food chains have staged multiple one-day strikes in recent months, first in November and most recently in April. The strikes have centered on claims of low-wages, the lack of health and retirement benefits, and their inability to organize unions without intimidation from employers, and the survey’s numbers lend credence to their wage claims:

More than 8-in-10 employees (84%) report being victims of wage theft over the course of the last year; 66% report at least two abuses, 45% report at least three, and more than thirty percent of employees (31%) report being victims of at least four of these practices. Specifically:

• 36% of workers report being required to work while off the clock
• 32% of cashiers report being required to pay their employer if their register is short
• 30% of those who have worked 40+ hours in a week report they have not always received pay of time-and-a-half for overtime hours.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a Democrat, recently launched an investigation into the practices of fast food owners and their parent corporations, the New York Times reported today. Schneiderman’s investigation is looking into claims made evident by the Fast Food Forward survey, including whether employers paid workers less than the minimum wage and failed to pay overtime. Schneiderman has previously brought claims against more than 20 companies for labor violations, according to the Times.

The abuses, however, aren’t limited to New York. Since workers there launched the first round of strikes in November, they have been joined by fast food and retail workers in Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, and, most recently, Milwaukee, where workers held a one-day walkout Wednesday.

Following the London Whale trading scandal that cost JP Morgan at least $6 billion, Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon is facing pressure from shareholders, who will hold a vote at the annual general meeting on May 21 to potentially split his roles. The failed trade originated from a trading desk that was meant to help the company reduce risk. It sparked a Senate investigation that ultimately concluded that the company misled regulators by mislabeling the portfolio of trades.

But rather than bring the hammer down on the head of the company, some are now potentially moving to vote against other shareholders who serve on the risk committee – Ellen Futter in particular, who is president of the American Museum of Natural History and a former director of AIG. At last year’s meeting, before the full effect of the London Whale trade was known, 14 percent of the vote was cast against her re-election.

While some shareholders may feel it is better to hold the risk management committee accountable and oust those who don’t have as much experience at financial institutions, Flutter’s expulsion would follow a disconcerting trend of laying the blame with women when things go wrong in the financial industry.

When the failed trade first surfaced, the first head to roll was not the London Whale himself, and Jamie Dimon managed to stay mostly insulated. Rather, the first person to step down was a woman: Ina R. Drew, JP Morgan’s Chief Investment Officer who was in charge of the division in which the trades were made. Drew was among the highest paid women in finance, being one of the top paid officials at JP Morgan. She has since been replaced by two men.

Similar resignations or firings happened during the chaos of the financial crisis. Erin Callan of Lehman Brothers and Zoe Cruz of Morgan Stanley were both high-ranking executives who may have been scapegoated when their companies faltered. This is what Michelle Ryan, an associate professor at Exeter University, has dubbed the “glass cliff”: “women often tend to occupy these dangerous leadership positions in dangerous times, when things are getting hairy,” she says. When things do go south, then, the women take the hit.

There were likely valid reasons for each of these women to be let go when they were. Drew, after all, oversaw the division making risky trades, although the risks of those bets were conveyed to top executives and dismissed. But they fit a trend in which female executives were three times as likely to lose their jobs in the recession.

Women already make up a small share of leadership positions in the United States, and in finance in particular. They hold 8.6 percent of executive officer roles in the finance and insurance industries and less than 20 percent of board director positions. If they are more likely to get ousted when a company hits troubled times, those numbers will continue to be depressed.

Late on Wednesday, American retailer Abercrombie & Fitch announced it would sign a safety upgrade plan that has been signed by six major European retailers and one other American company, PVH, owner of Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, and Izod. The agreement, which is legally binding, includes independent factory inspections and requires companies to help underwrite building upgrades and repairs.

Many other American retailers have yet to sign on, including Walmart and Gap. Gap has voiced concerns that the plan could be used to sue it in American courts and Walmart objected to governance and dispute resolution mechanisms. Walmart announced on Wednesday that it would instead use its own voluntary plan that includes inspecting all of its Bangladesh facilities and providing fire safety training to workers. Gap also sent a letter to employees at its headquarters saying that it has hired a fire inspector to examine factories in Bangladesh and will commit $22 million in loans to factories to make upgrades.

Meanwhile, other retailers are already looking to pull operations in Bangladesh and move them to other countries. The New York Times reports that Western executives are looking into sourcing production in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Indonesia. But pulling operations out of Bangladesh could only harm workers further:

Garment manufacturing makes up a fifth of the economy in Bangladesh and four-fifths of its exports, which means that one of the world’s poorest, most densely populated countries is desperately dependent on continued export orders to stave off soaring unemployment and possibly further political unrest. Some executives say that many multinationals will continue buying from Bangladesh, although some may diversify their orders to more countries.

Executives may also struggle to find safer working conditions elsewhere. A shoe factory in Cambodia collapsed on Thursday morning, killing two workers and injuring seven. An initial investigation showed that the ceiling lacked the materials to support heavy weight.

Rather than pulling operations, some companies are indicating that they will stay and make further investments in the country. In an interview on Wednesday with the Financial Times, H&M CEO Karl-Johan Persson said he supports Bangladesh’s recent announcement that it would raise the minimum wage for garment workers, saying that he wants salaries to be revised yearly. The company has also agreed to pay as much as $500,000 per year toward factory improvements and inspections by signing onto the safety agreement.

Although some retailers fear the costs of upgrades, they could pass them on entirely to consumers and only raise prices by 10 cents per garment.