Greatest Country In The World Votes To Cut Food Stamps To Poor

Just googled it and read an article that at certain walmarts food stamps account for 25-40% of revenues! So do you think cutting that off might not cut a few jobs pushing even more people onto foodstamps and Medicaid continuing this downward spiral!?

Instead of wasting time on this crap how about working on a few jobs bills!

 

What happens to the money that isn't spent on food stamps? does it evaporate?

How about the people who where once on food stamps? are you under the impression they would stop needing food?

 

They pay better and more regularly then the poor and defenseless

Rocket River

 

That would seem to be the Republican position re: children, the elderly, the disabled, and the working poor.

 

"This is a sincere effort to manage the budget."

Deplorable. This exceptional country is so ****ed up sometimes.

 

The idea that charities would somehow pick up the slack is silly. When taxpayer money goes to the govt. to feed the poor. It goes to one organization (the govt.).

When the money is given to the charities it split up thousands of times, and would only be able to help a far more limited number of people.

Think of it. If one organization got one million dollars or 10,000 organizations got $100, which way would help more poor?

I guess Republicans just want to be inefficient about helping the poor as possible.

 

I completely agree with you. Cutting trillions in welfare to the oligarchs running this country would be a fantastic place to start. Cutting $5billion that primarily keeps kids and the elderly fed is a terrible and immoral place to start.

The abuse of "the system", I say equally to all my friends here from across the spectrum, is not at the poop-smeared tail-end of the snake. Nay.

But yes, the system is being terribly abused, and it is not sustainable. I applaud Commodore for noting that the GOP should start closer to the head of the snake than the tail.

 

Can't feed everybody for nothing forever.

Nobody can ride for free forever.

And to this conservative, food stamps = forever

...and nothing should ever be forever.

 

But you are willing to feed the Koch Brothers, their friends, and their purchased politicians our life's blood? You're okay with the average American's household income being lower now than in the 1960's?

I'm not okay with that. And I refuse to turn to the relative pennies that are tossed at the least fortunate to address the big problems we have.

It's like trying to fix a basketball team by repeatedly punishing the dude at the very end of the bench. Maybe he really and truly sucks, but making him run extra wind sprints, and fining him repeatedly isn't going to affect your starting five.

 

So what the graph is telling us is that during the period where the recession and unemployment hit hard due to corporate greed and irresponsibility...food stamp dependency went up?

Craziness! Tired off all of these poor people screwing it up for everyone.

 

But wait... weren't we told that the recession ended in 2009? Haven't we been in recovery almost the entire time this graph covers?

 

The GOP is just playing to the absolute worst of their base, and it will backfire, just like most of their political #### wagging backfires.

As a progressive, I am disgusted, but I also feel a bit better knowing that Republican leadership has learned absolutely nothing from their last two Presidential defeats, and each defeat will be more convincing than than the last until they both reject and excrete the worst elements of their agenda.

 

Is food an entitlement?

This is just... gross. You can argue until you're blue in the face that, perhaps, there may be some degree of waste in SNAP program. However, if you're a self-proclaimed "fiscal hawk," why start here? Why kick the poor, elderly and young in the balls after they've already been knocked to the ground? Why is it that every "necessary" cut come from them before you demand fixing the corporate tax code, income taxes, defense spending and every other glaring hole?

This is a first-world country. You can't maintain that status by letting people starve while plugging your ears and repeating "We are the greatest... We are the greatest..." Other countries are not following our lead. Why do you think that is? They are not envious of our hunger, our infant mortality rate, our wealth gap and our uniquely American death-by-curable-disease-syndrome.

Since when has history rewarded behavior like this? For about as long as the popped champagne continues to have bubbles.

 

So you see no difference? None at all? Food stamps participation is as commodore is saying - rising endlessly?

 

welfare budget.. $405B
military budget (not including black ops).. $868B

 

You do understand what the definition of a recession is right?

 

I would suggest that some of you armchair right wingers here actually try going into some of the poorer neighborhoods and working with some of these folks. You know, educate them on how to improve their lives.

I've done that, and it really opened my eyes. Most of the people on food stamps DON'T WANT TO BE ON FOOD STAMPS. And I think when you actually see that you might gain a level of badly needed perspective that you've lost listening to right-wing shock jocks.

 

Some things should be guaranteed.

A disabled person should be able to eat for their forever. An elderly person should be able to eat for their forever. A child should be able to eat at least until they are an adult.

That's 85% of your food stamps right their.

The whole idea that jobless and homeless people should just get a job to take care of their situation is pretty humorous. Have we seen many homeless? Most of them are mentally ill. Often they walk around talking about the various demons chasing them, and how they would never let their cat be hurt by that mother f'er again, etc.

While it might be interesting and fun to fill an office with that population, I don't think it would be the most productive solution.

 

I'm not talking about the BS that's talked on the surface. I'm talking about actually what is done by the government. Yes, there's a huge difference in how about the government present their policies. Chinese government just do it. American government sell the "benefits" to the people, which as you point out, are generally made up in order to justify their actions.

But filter through politician talk and all the propaganda. Simply look at what's really happening, and it's more similar and different. Income disparity, which is ridiculous in China, becoming more the case in the US. Environmnet protection, which has been so integral to American, is coming down. The concept of "free market", which China has embraced leading to people working for peanuts with basically no social welfare. The bank bailout, while a huge issue in the US, was done very discreetly in China where the government just printed out a ton of money to cover bank debts. Which resulted in severe inflation and people's savings basically losing tons of value.

If you look at how poor people live in China, it's basically realized vision of Republican congress.

 

Food stamps are a public policy band-aid that keeps the lid from blowing off of the growing wealth disparity in this country. If Republicans cut too much in these areas, they may end up seeing a serious swing back the other way and much more significant reforms of how wealth is distributed.