It seems like the Repubs in Congress are just all about doing nothing but making symbolic gestures - mostly of the raised middle finger variety.
The House voted yesterday to cut $40 billion from SNAP (food stamps) over the next ten years. First off, it really doesn't "sound like all that much" (we're still gonna spend $700-800 Billion in those 10 years), but when you look at how little help SNAP provides for individual households, it's a real blow.
Center on Budget Policy and Priorities:
It's just standard issue bullshit. Repubs get to cast a feel-good vote to show their wealthy contributors how willing they are to get all hard-ass and tough-lovey, while further stoking their constituents' sense of being victimized by those rotten undeserving illegal aliens and welfare cheats; and their Democrat enablers. And nothing but the date and the time will change.
But there're a few questions I keep thinking somebody in "the press corps" might wanna ask Eric Cantor or John Boehner or any of these jag-offs who can't manage to get Ayn Rand's dick outa their mouths long enough to think about what happens to actual flesh-and-bone people who have to live with the results of these fever-dream hallucinations they keep trying to enact into law.
(I know - silly me - actually thinking one of these Press Poodles might figure out how to do his job; and expecting a certain brand of politician to behave like a mensch).
Here's one question: In a year's time, do you think the cuts you're proposing will cause fewer people to be poor?
And another: What's your plan if by some crazy happenstance your plan doesn't reduce the number of people in need of food assistance?
Here're some more:
The House voted yesterday to cut $40 billion from SNAP (food stamps) over the next ten years. First off, it really doesn't "sound like all that much" (we're still gonna spend $700-800 Billion in those 10 years), but when you look at how little help SNAP provides for individual households, it's a real blow.
Center on Budget Policy and Priorities:
The 2009 Recovery Act’s temporary boost to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits is scheduled to end on November 1, 2013, resulting in a benefit cut for every SNAP household. For families of three, the cut will be $29 a month — a total of $319 for November 2013 through September 2014, the remaining months of fiscal year 2014.[2] That’s a serious loss, especially in light of the very low amount of basic SNAP benefits. Without the Recovery Act’s boost, SNAP benefits will average less than $1.40 per person per meal in 2014. (See Table 2 for estimates of the size of the SNAP cut in each state in fiscal year 2014.) Nationally, the total cut is estimated to be $5 billion in fiscal year 2014.So yeah, it sucks but it prob'ly doesn't make any real difference because the thing has practically no chance in the Senate - Debbie Stabanow has been calling it "a monumental waste of time", which it most certainly is.
It seems unlikely that Congress will enact legislation to remedy this problem, as President Obama and some members of Congress have proposed. Consequently, states need to prepare for the benefit cuts — including determining how they will provide information about the upcoming benefit reduction to participating households and other stakeholders as well as how to manage increased client inquiries when the cut takes effect.
It's just standard issue bullshit. Repubs get to cast a feel-good vote to show their wealthy contributors how willing they are to get all hard-ass and tough-lovey, while further stoking their constituents' sense of being victimized by those rotten undeserving illegal aliens and welfare cheats; and their Democrat enablers. And nothing but the date and the time will change.
But there're a few questions I keep thinking somebody in "the press corps" might wanna ask Eric Cantor or John Boehner or any of these jag-offs who can't manage to get Ayn Rand's dick outa their mouths long enough to think about what happens to actual flesh-and-bone people who have to live with the results of these fever-dream hallucinations they keep trying to enact into law.
(I know - silly me - actually thinking one of these Press Poodles might figure out how to do his job; and expecting a certain brand of politician to behave like a mensch).
Here's one question: In a year's time, do you think the cuts you're proposing will cause fewer people to be poor?
And another: What's your plan if by some crazy happenstance your plan doesn't reduce the number of people in need of food assistance?
Here're some more:
- Will the cuts in Food Stamps lead to more grocery stores being opened in poor neighborhoods?
- Will there be jobs in those neighborhoods?
- Will the people who live in those neighborhoods have reliable ways to get to those jobs?
- Will the banks make capital available so all those newly minted poverty-level entrepreneurs can start the bidness of their dreams, thus inventing jobs for themselves instead of relying on somebody else to give them jobs?
- An awful lot of families who rely on Food Stamps include children - are those kids supposed to get jobs (or create their own jobs) too?
- Do the kids need to be drug tested?
- If the parents test positive, do the kids lose their benefits as well?
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