Ronald Reagan brooked no doubt that food stamps equaled welfare. Running for president in 1976 he told what became a defining tale about the “strapping young buck” in the supermarket line who used stamps to buy T-bone steaks. His first White House budget made deep food stamp cuts.

There has long been an element of the subjective in what gets defined as the “safety net” and what gets attacked as “welfare,” that elastic and stigmatizing term. Now rising joblessness and misery have started new conflicts and exposed old rifts.

Sponsors of this spending call it a humane response to soaring hardship and an economically productive one; giving money to the poor stimulates the economy, they say, because poor people are quick to spend it. Conservatives have argued that poverty programs undermine work and marriage, and some see the stimulus bill as a stealth expansion of the welfare state. The very word, welfare, was weaponized last week.