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But here’s a detail of which Missourians in particular shouldn’t lose sight: The bill that passed the House last week and will soon face Senate debate will risk federal food benefits for some 650,000 Missourians, including more than a quarter-million children. Moreover, those recipients live primarily in the rural areas represented by members of the Missouri Republican congressional delegation that voted unanimously to pass the bill.

Make no mistake: That vote — by Reps. Mark Alford, Eric Burlison, Sam Graves, Bob Onder, Jason Smith and Ann Wagner — was nothing less than the heartless betrayal of the most vulnerable of their own constituents. They abandoned them in their eagerness to reward the rich at the expense of everyone else, or their mute terror of Trump, or some combination of both.

The question now is whether Missouri Sens. Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt will act in similarly cowardly, backstabbing fashion toward their own fellow Missourians by giving final passage to this abomination of a bill.

As we reported in this space last week, the measure to extend Trump’s budget-busting 2017 tax cuts for the rich would actually be worse than that awful measure, as it would (partly) pay for that plutocratic largesse by severely underfund Medicaid and other programs that serve the poor.

Food programs including SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) would see more than $280 billion in cuts over the next decade, with the federal government pushing more of the responsibility for funding and administering the programs onto the states.

In Missouri, those cuts would translate into a loss of roughly $400 million in federal funding, according to reporting by the .

For the roughly 1-in-10 impoverished Missourians who rely on those programs to eat, it would worsen what has already been a crisis in the state’s SNAP program. Earlier this month, a federal judge issued a blistering order against the state for excessive call wait times and other administrative snafus that have prevented it from getting food to qualifying recipient households. Because of the state’s bungling of the program, the judge wrote, some of Missouri’s poorest citizens (including children) “.�

Missouri state government is already infamous for its technical inability to competently administer various programs and benefits that other states manage just fine; that’s another issue.

But it means the details of the proposed federal SNAP cuts could hit especially hard here, beyond merely the shrinking levels of federal dollars. Trump’s putatively “beautiful� bill would, among other things, pawn off the majority of SNAP’s administrative responsibilities to the states. Anyone care to wager how well that will go over in a Missouri system that can’t even properly administer its current, smaller portion of the program?

About 10% percent of Missouri’s citizens rely on federal food dollars (including some 21,000 veterans), but that portion isn’t evenly distributed statewide. The highest concentrations of SNAP recipients live in rural areas or small towns, according to the . These areas are represented in the House exclusively by the aforementioned six Missouri Republicans who voted to put those citizens’ food benefits at risk.

As the measure moves through the Senate, Missouri Sens. Hawley and Schmitt will have the opportunity to demonstrate whether they, unlike their House counterparts, can prioritize the interests of their most vulnerable constituents over those of far-flung corporations, one-percenters and Trump. Their constituents should make sure they know they are watching.

Readers can contact Hawley’s Washington, D.C., office at (202) 224-6154, or at hawl

Schmitt’s D.C. office is at (202) 224-5721, or at schm