SNAP (food stamps) Update

[GlassSteagallfan]

Two Republican members of the House Agriculture Committee are working on a plan to present to the House soon, on what to do with the food stamp program, or SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), which was, for the first time ever, split off from the farm bill—for separate action, in the version of the bill passed in July by the House.

Kristi Noem (South Dakota) and Marlin Stutzman (Indiana) plan to cut $4 billion a year from the Federal SNAP program — in contrast to a Senate measure to cut $4 billion over 10 years — which currently expends about $80 billion a year.

The cuts are to come from dropping "worthless eaters" from the 48+ million Americans now dependent on monthly SNAP aid for their food. There are to be pauper-level eligibility requirements, plus new rules requiring work-to-eat, or seeking work. They intend to try to reduce the food-aid rolls by requiring drug testing, and barring those convicted of sex crimes or murder.

The principle involved is that "the poor sometimes become too numerous," and must be culled.

This is just the latest and lowest development in the ongoing debacle of economic policy, in particular for farming and providing for the food supply.

Full article

[AutumnW]

If you give able-bodied humans something for nothing, it demoralizes them. It strips their lives of meaning and substance and a sense of control. Functionally they can become like children. Left with little to do, many people DO start taking drugs. I was on welfare, due to a disability, many years ago, for about a year. There is nothing worse. Being impoverished is the least of it. Feeling like you are having no impact, no use to anybody, is terrible. I was stuck with it because I was physically unable to work.

It is really important that people who are destitute are not taken advantage of and worked to the bone. Equally, it is important for their spirit that they do something.

[onawah]

What always seems to be left out in the debates about food stamps is that many of the people who receive them are too old, too young or too disabled to work.
And what many of them receive in food stamps is already insufficient.
If you leave out that part of the equation, you have fallen for the philosophy that the Republican Party is so famous for espousing, that people who need help are parasites, and the well off are the only ones worth consideration.

[AutumnW]

Posted by onawah (here)
What always seems to be left out in the debates about food stamps is that many of the people who receive them are too old, too young or too disabled to work.
And what many of them receive in food stamps is already insufficient.
If you leave out that part of the equation, you have fallen for the philosophy that the Republican Party is so famous for espousing, that people who need help are parasites, and the well off are the only ones worth consideration.

Hi Onawah, I hope, if you're responding to my post that you noticed, I qualified 'able-bodied.' Americans, by and large, are culturally averse to accepting govt help. I think this is pretty much across the board--from left to right. Most people on food stamps really need them and there currently are probably many who should be taking them, who aren't.

[onawah]

Agreed, AutumnW, and yes, I noticed.
It's just that the whole story of who qualifies for food stamps and why so often gets left out of the picture; the catchwords are usually "corruption", "misuse" and "entitlement".
As if that justifies cutting the needy off the help they must have just in order to survive.