For good of economy, keep food stamps fully funded
Lewis DiuguidIf Kansas Republican Sen. Pat Roberts were working for the good of the U.S. economy, he would never cut $36 billion over the next 10 years from the food stamp program as he is proposing.
He only has to visit any grocery store in the state — particularly Kansas City, Kan. — to understand. Many of the people making purchases and waiting in line pay for the items with their EBT (Electronic Benefit Transfer) cards in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
The Kansas City Star reports that 939,000 people in Missouri receive food stamps, or one in every seven persons in the state. In Kansas, 315,000 people, or one in nine, get food stamps. In the U.S. 45 million Americans in an average month in 2011 were on food stamps. That amounts to $78 billion in food assistance administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Farmers should be jumping for joy that people who otherwise might not eat have food stamps, enabling them to feed their families. When poor families are fed, farmers hear the cha-ching at their banks.
Roberts ought to know that trickle up theory works a lot better than the trickle down one that Republicans try to embrace.
George Hunsucker
Northland
2 months, 4 weeks agoyessir lewis.. we need to keep supporting our food stamp President….If we keep trying, we can get to 60 million on food stamps!!!! There’s plenty of money to pay for it, right libs?
I am just glad the economy is getting sooooooooooooooooo much better under his “leadership”…..
Matt Henry
2 months, 4 weeks agoLet’s help out the economy and get 100 million on food stamps. Then we will really have the country back on track.
Now that my tongue has left my cheek, notice how there is an A to B logic to LWD’s piece that I’m not sure history or statistics will bear. Did you realize that without food stamps people might not eat?
Sure, if food stamps disappeared altogether there might be some folks who “would not eat”, although even those would be crazy rare, I would bet. Families and communities come together and help each other in times of crisis. But does anyone, and I mean anyone out there REALLY think that cutting $3.6 billion a year from a system that spends nearly $80b is going to leave us with people with absolutely no other option for putting meals on the table in any other way? Really?
Hyperbolic nonsense.
JR Beillenhouser
2 months, 4 weeks agoLewis -
Start listening to Dave Ramsey in the morning. You don’t have a clue about economics. Your “trickle up” theory is complete ignorance.
When you have to borrow the money in order to finance the food stamp program, you don’t help the economy. You simply hide what is occurring. Libs like you don’t understand that eventually you have to pay all of the money back or you pay for it with credit downgrades, inflation, interest percentage increases, and eventually the collapse of economic systems. Look to the EU. It is happening right in front of your eyes but you are too partisan to see it.
What a wise politician, and an even wiser editorialist should be saying is: We need to take care of the poor, but we also need to be careful with taxpayers money and ensure that little or no fraud occurs, that only those that really need food stamps get them, and that we need to make sure we keep the country economically strong by limiting borrowing.
There is simply no way you win this argument. Real world economics do not follow your idealism. You can hide it for a while, but in the end, you are going to hurt most those very people you claim to want to help. When the economy goes, the poor, the old; they will be hurt the most.
George Hunsucker
Northland
2 months, 3 weeks agoSome afternoon music for the libs….
http://www.youtube.com/embed/xEYFFiEnUjQ?feature=player_embedded%22