Republican Extremism – ‘House GOP drafting new food stamp bill with $40B in cuts’
Why do republicans hate children, the poor, the working poor, the elderly, the disabled and even some military families?
‘The number of people using food stamps roughly corresponds to the number of Americans living in poverty, which rose to just below 50 million people in 2011’.
‘Almost half the children presently receiving SNAP benefits—some 10 million—already live in extreme poverty, which means household income is less than half the official poverty level, already set an unrealistically low level. Another 9 million receiving food stamps are elderly or have a serious disability’.
‘The cuts in SNAP benefits will quite literally take food off the table for millions of American families at a time of deepening poverty and burgeoning social inequality’.
@ : http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/03/29/food-m29.html
‘The 5,000 military families receiving food stamps was a tiny percentage of the 48 million recipients nationwide, but it was a major increase over the previous year when the Department of Agriculture reported that only 1,000 recipients listed “active duty military” as their employment status’.
@ : http://www.military.com/daily-news/2013/07/13/dod-5000-military-families-losing-food-stamps.html
‘House Republicans are drafting legislation that would cut $40 billion from the federal food stamp program over 10 years’.
‘That’s nearly double the $20.5 billion in cuts that were included in the farm bill legislation that failed on the House floor in June’.
From : http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/agriculture/315093-house-gop-drafting-new-food-stamp-bill-with-40b-in-cuts-
The Last Of The Millenniums 
Reblogged this on The ObamaCrat.Com™.
Many people who are not living in poverty did so by making sacrifices. Many times, that means eating a can of sardines for lunch once again, or not buying ready made waffles or soda pop. So there comes some resentment when you are checking out and see the person in front of you with a cart full of chips, doughnuts and steak and getting it for free when they scan their ebt card. That is when the middle class person understands simple economics, and realizes the reason they can’t buy that bag of chips is because food subsidies as snap have manipulated the market.
We should go back to handing out food to the poor, instead of snap and cash entitlements. Hand out the healthy broccoli that Michelle Obama says we should be eating. Or bags of beans and rice. Then the truely needy will be the only ones taking advantage. I bet we find out 90% of recipients are not starving as they refuse to eat what we give. Then we know we should be cutting the program that much…
How many who use SNAP have ‘a cart full of chips, doughnuts and steak’?
1%?
10%?
100%?
How many are ‘getting it for free’.
They’ve never paid taxes?
They don’t work part time?
They aren’t a disabled Veteran?
They aren’t disabled?
They aren’t on social security?
They don’t work full time but need a little extra?
And just where are you going to get all this ‘go back to handing out food to the poor’?
Is that food just going to magicly show up?
Maybe the farmers are just going to give it away?
How many people will it take to distribute food?
Across the Country?
Will they work for free?
Are they trained in nutrition?
Will the people getting this food fill out an application?
Will the application be checked for truthfulness?
Will we hire people to check out the applications?
Will we pay the people to check out the applications?
You have a simplistic view of poverty.
Less then 3% on SNAP fall in the category of ‘fraud’ and ‘waste’ as you described.
Of the 48 million people using SNAP :
10 Million on SNAP are Children.
9 Million are senior citizens on Social Security.
Poverty is not a local issue. It is a National issue.
You are the Conservative talk radio you listen to have not even considered how a program of giving away food would be structured.
The system we have now is actually the most cost effective and efficient.
One shouldn’t profile, but it is easy at the grocery checkout. The obese female with a cart full of junkfood will probably whip out her snap card to pay for it. So will the 18 year old with three kids. Then as you are loading your groceries into your 20 year old car, you see them driving off in a newer car with $2k rims.
It’s nice of you to care about the starving. You and people like you should chip in and do something about it. I don’t like having my money stolen by government force to also chip in. I don’t want to subsidize churches or non-profits who feed the poor, by giving them tax exemptions, which means I have to make up those taxes. People who want to help should do it with their own funds, or get those they help to chip in with labor, etc.
As far as kids getting food stamp benefits, they likely wouldn’t need help if we did away with the welfare state. Their mothers keep pumping out kids because it has become profitable, from snap, section 8, to outright cash from earned income credits. I say let the laws of Darwin work. Mothers who can’t afford kids will wait to have them until they can. They will better their lives so they can them, and if they already have kids, will make sure their kids don’t end up the same. Instead, we create generation after generation of poverty because we enable them… Somebody really poor and hungy won’t waste their own money on junkfood, as it is usually 7 ounces for $5, when that could get you five punds of chicken that can feed you for a week. Because you didn’t buy those chips, you have a little left for the gas. We already limit what you can buy with snap. Not letting you buy junkfood only takes a few strokes on the keyboard. I bet if we audited the program, you too would agree most of the stuff being bought is irresponsible, and the truely starving would never buy it.
As for distribution, government used to hand out government food. So they already dealt with the issues you discussed. When they were handing out food, the participation rate was a fraction of today. It was still a handout to farmers, but not the multi-billion one of today…. A better way would be to just make a list of items and have each store come up with a basket including those. Or have a list that the recipient has to pick out their own from the shelves. But you limit it to healthy things like “4 16oz cans of kidney beans”, “up to 5 pounds of frozen vegetables, store brand”. We can set limits on foods, brands, sizes, etc. When I say healthy, it doesn’t mean we let the hungry go to Whole Foods and buy organic berries at $12 a pound…. Even after limiting food to healthy stuff, it still has value which those who won’t eat it can instead sell it, and use that money to buy the junkfood they crave. We could increase punishments, or even have recipients have to bring back the upc barcodes from the last items we gave them…
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