At the moment, for instance, Republican leaders in the House and the Senate are mounting yet another series of assaults on some of the most vulnerable Americans—the poor single mothers who cannot feed their children, and the long-term unemployed who still have no prospect of work nearly two years after the recession supposedly ended.
Hardly anyone other than a lobbyist would normally pay much attention to the machinations of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, but that is where truly indecent behavior is running rampant these days. Members of that subcommittee, who oversee the Women, Infants and Children (or WIC) federal nutrition support program for the poor, recently decreed reductions in its annual funding, just as food prices are rising more rapidly than in many years.
Breaching a long bipartisan commitment to making sure this successful program's funding is sufficient to the need, the subcommittee's Republican majority has decided we can no longer afford to ensure healthy nutrition for every hungry mother and child. (What we can apparently always afford, however, are more and bigger tax cuts for billionaires and petroleum companies.)
By cutting $650 million from WIC, according to the experts at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, the subcommittee will deprive hundreds of thousands of indigent women and children of program services, which include healthy foods, nutrition counseling and referrals to health care providers when necessary. The exact number of victims will depend on how fast food prices go up. But there will surely be many more infants and children who must cope with the ill effects of low birth weight and anemia, and all the other ills arising from bad nutrition in this wealthy and verdant nation.
Suffer the Little Children
As usual, the mean impulse to save money by punishing the poor is shortsighted, since the obvious result is a growing population that is either crippled at birth or ruined in youth, requiring expensive hospitalization, special education or, eventually, prison cells. And as usual, the justifications for stupid policy are based on botched data and false arguments, such as the Republican claim that WIC is wasting 40% of its budget on administrative costs, when the actual number is 9%.
But then there is little real prudence among the proponents of these cuts.
Nor is there much mercy among them, either, despite the professed Christianity of the Ag subcommittee members, who mostly come from bastions of religiosity such as Iowa, Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama. No doubt these Bible-thumping politicians all know that Jesus once told his disciples to "suffer the little children to come unto me, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Somehow in conservative circles, his profound remark seems to end at "suffer the little children."
Slashing WIC is only one aspect of the broad assault on the poor mounted by Republicans in Congress since they regained power. Just last week, House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) and Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, proposed radical changes in unemployment insurance that would snatch $31 billion in benefits from families whose breadwinner has been jobless for six months or more.
Their bill would permit states to stop paying any benefits to those families—and to use the money instead for other purposes, like reducing business taxes. If passed, that legislation would further reduce economic demand and drive more families into poverty.
And then there are the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program cuts in the 2012 Republican budget, which would reduce spending on food stamps by more than $120 billion over the coming decade. If you've lost your job, after all, why should you or your children expect to eat?
Yes, Weiner is gone from Washington, and good riddance. Will we now scrutinize the far deeper immorality that reigns there?
© 2011 Creators.com
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You are very good at sounding intelligent while being completely ignorant at the same time. You are a perfect example of the right wing educated minority. You have delusions of welfare abuse that you must have gained from being exposed to typical right wing misinformation. Your castration suggestion epitomizes EXACTLY why people like you, with your same values, have no place in any position where the good of the public is concerned.
Chuck, I doubt you have ever worked in a supermarket in a low income area. I wish I could share with you the product movement reports that indicated low income people choose to buy high fat, high carb, low nutrition foods. Giving people food stamps is like giving a loaded gun to a monkey. We are only hurting them more. It depressing to see one customer after another come proudly marching in filling their carts with Twinkies, Tv dinners, ice cream, etc. Or fresh hamburger for their dogs. They are just laughing at us taxpayers. If I have dillusions of welfare abuse its because I lived it and seen it up close. We should at least offer a vasectomy option for men who refuse to care for their children. Gee Chuck, whats your plan on solving welfare abuse? I have one that I think would work. Are you against fathers taking care of their children, are you for serial fornicating, are you all for childhood obesity and diabetes? Why not get rid of handhouts and get people to opt back into the workforce griding out hard labor 70-80 hours a week. It builds character and gets them off the dole. Think of the kids. How would you like to remember your parents? Oh mom and dad were on welfare ,refused to work, laid in a hammock all day drinking tall boys smoking cigarettes, or mom and dad worked hard 80 hours a week so we could eat and have a roof over our head. No kid wants a coward for a parent.
Also anyone getting WIC and Food stamps should also be required to pass a drug test. Any trace or tobacco or illegal drugs - no welfare. Also a criminal background check -- convicted of a felony - no welfare. No photo ID - no welfare. Everyone I've ever known that is on food stamps and welfare was making decent money. Mostly on the underground cash economy. And if they weren't making good money they had the opportuntiy to take on one or two more jobs but weren't. I'd say 90% of the people getting handouts are frauds.
Interesting in the article how it slants towards children suffering. Let me see -FREE breakfast and FREE lunch at school. Its good that we are getting some nutrition to the kids. Parents will often find illegal ways of trading Food Stamp and WIC benefits for cash, cigarettes, liquor, and lotto. Look at where the highest percentage of lotto tickets are sold -- at stores with high food stamp usage. Chain stores like Walmart and Pick N Save won't allow Food Stamp fraud, but small corner stores survive on it. Some will run specials like if you buy $20 of their inflated priced food, you get 5 free cigarettes and a can of malt liquor. So instead of shopping at Aldi and getting the most for their money, they go to where they get the most fraud for their money.
Ahh so if this is true, why beat around the bush? Why not just kill everyone who is on welfare? Or work them to death? 80 hour a week jobs? Hell yeah. Make those coloreds work for their alcohol and tobacco. Don't worry David, when I worked around poor black people all the time, my racism spiked too. Just try to keep that $hit in check.
2% of people on welfare are abusers. That's a fact. But you make it the whole argument. 2%. You want to make a single mom work 80 hours a week because of that 2%? That means kids without parents around. What happens when that single mom's unemployment runs out after 6 months and she still can't get a job with enough pay per hour to make ends meet?
How about something more constructive: up to a certain amount, we give people an incentive to work. If you make $8.50 an hour bagging groceries and work 40 hours, we'll give you an extra $170 a week. We'll match half of what you make. Hell David, maybe you could qualify for the incentive. Think constructive not destructive.
If people had to work off their welfare they would think twice before spreading their legs for some drifter with no name. I've traveled to other countries that have no welfare. I'm telling you those people work. Go to Walmart in Mexico and there are guys there that will wash your car in the parking lot while you shop. Go to a resort town and a woman will be your companion all day long for cheap, rubbing oil on you, fetching you maguartias, and being arm candy. You don't get that here because they are home watching tv waiting for the mail to come. They could at least look busying by picking up litter in their neighborhood. You suggestion of killing people is absurd. The idea is to teach them that the reward comes from work and nothing being lazy.
My old bookie collected welare in four states, WI, IL, IN, and MI. He drove a van full of women once a month to pick up their checks. He also created a business of shuttling fellow welfare abusers to the casnios up north.
If someone is on welfare and they could be doing something, anything, right now to pick up any amount of cash, such as cleaning windshields, then they are a fraud. If they are buying junk food with food stamps, they are a fraud. If they are buying liquor, lotto, tobacco, or drugs, they are a fraud. I'd say 98% are frauds. If they could be picking tomatos in Florida so we would not have to import labor from Mexico, they are a fraud. Why do we have to import labor from Mexico to pick crops when we have all these families on welfare that could be doing that work? If they could be mowing my yard for two dollars instead of watching soap operas, they are a fraud. If they could be down at Home Depot in the parking lot holding up a sign, jumping up and down "pick me pick me!" asking for work they are a fraud. If the cute ones could be down at National and 19th looking for a "date" but arn't. They are a fraud. Sometimes when I see those hookers trolling up and down, I have to admire them a little, at least they are trying to work. When I see people laboring15 hours a day in 110 degree heat in those Texas watermelon fields instead of collecting a welfare check, I admire that.
I agree, I'm tired of hearing people complain they can't work more than 28-32 hours a week or they will lose their welfare. But if they worked 70-80 hours a week we wouldn't need to give them welfare and they would become taxpayers instead of cowardly parasites.
Really think of the kids we could save. A lot of these moms are becoming morbidly obese on all the free food they are eating. Then we read where one of them will now and then roll over on one of their kids killing them while they are passed out.