Klabusich writes: "My food stamp benefits were recently slashed - an
experience more Americans will have if GOP lawmakers get their way."
Shopper at a supermarket. (photo: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington
Post/Getty)
How Republicans Are Taking Food Out of the Mouth of America's Poor
By Katie Klabusich, Rolling Stone
18 July 15
Last month, as I peeled open an envelope from CalFresh - California's food
stamp program - I felt a little like Charlie Bucket hoping to find the
golden ticket. I held my breath, hoping beyond hope that my new ZIP code in
America's "nanny state" might mean that the 15 years I spent balancing on an
economic tightrope without a net were behind me.
"Effective 07/01/2015, your Food Stamp benefits are changed from $141.00 to
$16.00 each month," the letter said.
My knees buckled.
I had landed on food assistance in January after getting hit with an
unexpected medical bill that equaled one-third of what was then my monthly
income. My situation was so serious that San Diego County expedited my
approval into the program, and I received my EBT card just four days after
applying.
Then, in May, I managed to scrape together $1,200 in earnings, after my
self-employment allowances - roughly double what I had made in previous
months. When my six-month CalFresh check-in came around in June, the state
apparently determined that this development meant I was now mostly OK.
It felt like the governor had appeared at my door, hat in hand,
unconvincingly apologetic. "We understand you're in a tough spot, and we'd
like to help you out. But do you have change for a $20?"
Even routinely clocking between 60 and 90 hours of work a week, my finances
have always been tenuous at best. My friends have long joked that I'm the
opposite of even-steven; it's not uncommon for me to land a last-minute
housesitting gig or bartending shift - some source of extra income - only to
have my car develop an ailment that costs damn near the amount I earned.
By the time I fled from New York to San Diego to live with a friend,
following the loss of three paid work contracts in just a few months last
year, I was no longer able to avoid a hard truth: My two college degrees and
my strong work ethic weren't enough to achieve the American Dream I had been
told about growing up. And now, my short-lived relief at finally having
health care (#ThanksObama), guaranteed food to eat, and community resources
like great credit unions, accessible doctors, and affordable public
transportation was replaced with a familiar feeling of exhausted
frustration.
That frustration, and the accompanying weight of never being able to take
eating for granted - of never being able to grocery shop or pull into a
drive-thru without checking an account balance and doing a month's worth of
math - is a feeling far too many Americans know all too well.
And it's a feeling even more Americans will experience if Republicans have
their way.
Many GOP politicians have long been opposed to providing food assistance to
Americans in need; just this week, the Oklahoma Republican Party posted a
message on Facebook likening food stamp recipients to animals.
Soon, if the budget plan being considered by our GOP-controlled Congress
passes, things will get measurably worse for SNAP recipients (SNAP being the
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the formal name for food stamps).
When Congress returned from recess after the July 4th holiday, one of the
majority party's first orders of business was to reaffirm the funding cuts
that threaten to leave millions more Americans hungry over the next decade.
The House Appropriations Committee - Congress's wallet, essentially -
approved the fiscal year 2016 agriculture appropriation bill, which they'd
advertised as designed to "protect farmers and ranchers from overregulation,
support rural communities, help the hungry, and maintain food and drug
safety."
Apparently their idea of "help[ing] the hungry" is to take food out of our
mouths. According to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,
the House-approved numbers - which are likely to be matched in the Senate
bill expected this week - would result in $125 billion in SNAP cuts over
several years and "would end food assistance for millions of low-income
families, cut benefits for millions of such households, or do some
combination of the two."
The first $184 million in SNAP reductions would come immediately, and would
be paired with $139 million in cuts to the Women, Infants, and Children, or
WIC, program - because apparently we need to teach kids to handle hunger as
early as possible.
Why the pressing need to trim approximately 0.0085 percent of the $3.8
trillion federal budget? Priorities and redundancy.
According to the House budget conference agreement, which laid out the
FY2016 priorities, the appropriations bill was designed with a specific
purpose in mind:
"The legislation targets this funding to national programs that have the
most benefit to the American people and the U.S. economy, while reducing
inefficient, wasteful, or lower-priority programs and agencies."
That's a bold move, saying that 14 percent of Americans don't rate on your
party's priority list, just a month before the first GOP debate of the 2016
presidential election season.
The agreement continues by bragging that the GOP budget "[i]mproves
transparency, efficiency, effectiveness and accountability of the federal
government by cutting waste, eliminating redundancies and enacting
regulatory reform."
To be fair, I suppose having 49 million of me is rather redundant.
Indeed, my situation is hardly an anomaly. The U.S. Conference of Mayors has
found that 84 percent of cities expect requests for emergency food
assistance like mine to increase over the next year. Officials in 13 cities
estimated that even with current funding levels, 27 percent of the need went
unmet last year.
Don't be mistaken: The 114th Congress didn't invent balancing the budget on
the backs of the poor, or demonizing those of us who are too lazy to take a
fourth job. This budget is in line with the current incarnation of the
Republican Party.
From 2012 to 2014, the GOP put its rising star, Paul Ryan, in charge of
developing a budget they could sell to the American people. Over that
period, Ryan's budgets included ten-year plans to cut SNAP by $134 billion,
$135 billion and then $137 billion.
Should the Senate match the House numbers in a vote this week, the bills
will be voted on by the full Senate and House on their way to President
Obama, with a signature required by law this fall. Senate democrats are
threatening to oppose spending bills that adhere to the caps in the 2011
Budget Control Act - the result of the sequester following the last game of
chicken over the budget.
The White House, of course, also has the power to reject a budget that lands
on the president's desk without the funds to support the expected increase
in enrollment in both SNAP and WIC. President Obama's budget request
proposed a $150 million contingency fund to support an anticipated caseload
of 8.5 million women, infants and children, and he's free to send a bill
without that accommodation back to Congress.
If the Democrats and the White House dig in their heels and declare this
punishment of the poor to be cruel and unnecessary, the country could see
the government come to yet another standstill, or become mired in seemingly
never-ending rounds of continuing resolutions to keep the wheels moving
while accomplishing nothing.
And taking food out of my mouth is only the start; they're also still after
my health care. Republicans are threatening to use the budget process to go
after everything from the already voted-on food assistance programs to
Obamacare (despite the recent Supreme Court ruling in the Obama
administration's favor). Paul Ryan said he'd use the reconciliation process
designed to avoid a Senate filibuster to repeal the entirety of the
Affordable Care Act if he could find a way, "given the restraints of
reconciliation."
I can't be poor enough or sick enough or hungry enough for my needs and
rights to come off the chopping block. I'm politically convenient because -
despite being part of a very sizeable minority - I have no lobbying power or
prevailing champion in the 2016 election pool.
Until the poor are seen as people - until it's understood that we're the
inevitable product of a capitalist system that accepts that a certain number
of human beings will be hungry - our basic needs will continue to be
sacrificed to shave a few tenths of a percentage point off the nation's
bottom line.
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Shopper at a supermarket. (photo: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington
Post/Getty)
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-republicans-are-taking-food-ou
t-of-my-mouth-20150715http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-republic
ans-are-taking-food-out-of-my-mouth-20150715
How Republicans Are Taking Food Out of the Mouth of America's Poor
By Katie Klabusich, Rolling Stone
18 July 15
ast month, as I peeled open an envelope from CalFresh - California's food
stamp program - I felt a little like Charlie Bucket hoping to find the
golden ticket. I held my breath, hoping beyond hope that my new ZIP code in
America's "nanny state" might mean that the 15 years I spent balancing on an
economic tightrope without a net were behind me.
"Effective 07/01/2015, your Food Stamp benefits are changed from $141.00 to
$16.00 each month," the letter said.
My knees buckled.
I had landed on food assistance in January after getting hit with an
unexpected medical bill that equaled one-third of what was then my monthly
income. My situation was so serious that San Diego County expedited my
approval into the program, and I received my EBT card just four days after
applying.
Then, in May, I managed to scrape together $1,200 in earnings, after my
self-employment allowances - roughly double what I had made in previous
months. When my six-month CalFresh check-in came around in June, the state
apparently determined that this development meant I was now mostly OK.
It felt like the governor had appeared at my door, hat in hand,
unconvincingly apologetic. "We understand you're in a tough spot, and we'd
like to help you out. But do you have change for a $20?"
Even routinely clocking between 60 and 90 hours of work a week, my finances
have always been tenuous at best. My friends have long joked that I'm the
opposite of even-steven; it's not uncommon for me to land a last-minute
housesitting gig or bartending shift - some source of extra income - only to
have my car develop an ailment that costs damn near the amount I earned.
By the time I fled from New York to San Diego to live with a friend,
following the loss of three paid work contracts in just a few months last
year, I was no longer able to avoid a hard truth: My two college degrees and
my strong work ethic weren't enough to achieve the American Dream I had been
told about growing up. And now, my short-lived relief at finally having
health care (#ThanksObama), guaranteed food to eat, and community resources
like great credit unions, accessible doctors, and affordable public
transportation was replaced with a familiar feeling of exhausted
frustration.
That frustration, and the accompanying weight of never being able to take
eating for granted - of never being able to grocery shop or pull into a
drive-thru without checking an account balance and doing a month's worth of
math - is a feeling far too many Americans know all too well.
And it's a feeling even more Americans will experience if Republicans have
their way.
Many GOP politicians have long been opposed to providing food assistance to
Americans in need; just this week, the Oklahoma Republican Party posted a
message on Facebook likening food stamp recipients to animals.
Soon, if the budget plan being considered by our GOP-controlled Congress
passes, things will get measurably worse for SNAP recipients (SNAP being the
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the formal name for food stamps).
When Congress returned from recess after the July 4th holiday, one of the
majority party's first orders of business was to reaffirm the funding cuts
that threaten to leave millions more Americans hungry over the next decade.
The House Appropriations Committee - Congress's wallet, essentially -
approved the fiscal year 2016 agriculture appropriation bill, which they'd
advertised as designed to "protect farmers and ranchers from overregulation,
support rural communities, help the hungry, and maintain food and drug
safety."
Apparently their idea of "help[ing] the hungry" is to take food out of our
mouths. According to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,
the House-approved numbers - which are likely to be matched in the Senate
bill expected this week - would result in $125 billion in SNAP cuts over
several years and "would end food assistance for millions of low-income
families, cut benefits for millions of such households, or do some
combination of the two."
The first $184 million in SNAP reductions would come immediately, and would
be paired with $139 million in cuts to the Women, Infants, and Children, or
WIC, program - because apparently we need to teach kids to handle hunger as
early as possible.
Why the pressing need to trim approximately 0.0085 percent of the $3.8
trillion federal budget? Priorities and redundancy.
According to the House budget conference agreement, which laid out the
FY2016 priorities, the appropriations bill was designed with a specific
purpose in mind:
"The legislation targets this funding to national programs that have the
most benefit to the American people and the U.S. economy, while reducing
inefficient, wasteful, or lower-priority programs and agencies."
That's a bold move, saying that 14 percent of Americans don't rate on your
party's priority list, just a month before the first GOP debate of the 2016
presidential election season.
The agreement continues by bragging that the GOP budget "[i]mproves
transparency, efficiency, effectiveness and accountability of the federal
government by cutting waste, eliminating redundancies and enacting
regulatory reform."
To be fair, I suppose having 49 million of me is rather redundant.
Indeed, my situation is hardly an anomaly. The U.S. Conference of Mayors has
found that 84 percent of cities expect requests for emergency food
assistance like mine to increase over the next year. Officials in 13 cities
estimated that even with current funding levels, 27 percent of the need went
unmet last year.
Don't be mistaken: The 114th Congress didn't invent balancing the budget on
the backs of the poor, or demonizing those of us who are too lazy to take a
fourth job. This budget is in line with the current incarnation of the
Republican Party.
From 2012 to 2014, the GOP put its rising star, Paul Ryan, in charge of
developing a budget they could sell to the American people. Over that
period, Ryan's budgets included ten-year plans to cut SNAP by $134 billion,
$135 billion and then $137 billion.
Should the Senate match the House numbers in a vote this week, the bills
will be voted on by the full Senate and House on their way to President
Obama, with a signature required by law this fall. Senate democrats are
threatening to oppose spending bills that adhere to the caps in the 2011
Budget Control Act - the result of the sequester following the last game of
chicken over the budget.
The White House, of course, also has the power to reject a budget that lands
on the president's desk without the funds to support the expected increase
in enrollment in both SNAP and WIC. President Obama's budget request
proposed a $150 million contingency fund to support an anticipated caseload
of 8.5 million women, infants and children, and he's free to send a bill
without that accommodation back to Congress.
If the Democrats and the White House dig in their heels and declare this
punishment of the poor to be cruel and unnecessary, the country could see
the government come to yet another standstill, or become mired in seemingly
never-ending rounds of continuing resolutions to keep the wheels moving
while accomplishing nothing.
And taking food out of my mouth is only the start; they're also still after
my health care. Republicans are threatening to use the budget process to go
after everything from the already voted-on food assistance programs to
Obamacare (despite the recent Supreme Court ruling in the Obama
administration's favor). Paul Ryan said he'd use the reconciliation process
designed to avoid a Senate filibuster to repeal the entirety of the
Affordable Care Act if he could find a way, "given the restraints of
reconciliation."
I can't be poor enough or sick enough or hungry enough for my needs and
rights to come off the chopping block. I'm politically convenient because -
despite being part of a very sizeable minority - I have no lobbying power or
prevailing champion in the 2016 election pool.
Until the poor are seen as people - until it's understood that we're the
inevitable product of a capitalist system that accepts that a certain number
of human beings will be hungry - our basic needs will continue to be
sacrificed to shave a few tenths of a percentage point off the nation's
bottom line.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
