The Congressman sez:

The Congressman said that everyone in his district that needed food stamps would get them. Well, lah dee dah. According to his party everyone who is hungry enough and deserves them is already getting them already but, just to be safe, they're going to cut the nutritional program a bit more just to give those slackers a kick in the pants to get working. Maybe he can cut a few million out of Operation Unite to feed his constituents. The Congressman sits atop what may be the most powerful committee in the House of Representatives, a powerful member of the majority party and still his party can't pass a Farm Bill with a food stamp provision because it wants to cut the benefits even more than they have already been cut. The majority party couldn't agree to fund food stamps so they just decided to not talk about it any more. Well, to be fair not all of that party is really so zealous to cut food stamps but almost all of those members fear the new kid on the block with the initials TP and don't want to make him angry. They went ahead and passed the Farm Bill without the food stamp provision so they could go ahead and give some billions in benefits to the huge corporate farms. The Congressman said that if no bill is passed funding will continue at the present amount just as if that will be the best thing one could hope for. Well, that is not the best we can hope for. We can hope to actually feed the huge numbers of fellow citizens whose families don't have enough to eat rather than allowing them to fall into the same condition that people did before we had enough compassion to help them survive the hunger.

Most of us have never known the kind of hunger that the food stamp program is designed to alleviate. Oh, we may have skipped a meal or two and felt like we could eat the south end of a north bound skunk but we have never experienced the hunger that dulls the brain and sucks the life out of a body. The kind that a kid may experience before he gets back to school to get a square meal. When we look at breaking the cycle of poverty there are few things more important than having a kid nourished enough to learn.

We can talk right now about the frustration of some people who fall into line at the store behind someone with a cart full of steaks, potato chips and soda pop who pulls out his benefit card to pay for it. It makes us mad when we can't even afford those things for ourselves and our kneejerk reaction is that there are too many people receiving benefits who wouldn't work in a pie factory and we need to cut them out. I invite you to take a moment to think about that. There are very few who would deny the help to someone who really needs it and if that is true then the problem is not the food stamp program, it is the oversight of it.

I personally know people who were barely getting by on the benefits they had when the latest round of cuts came through. What some families receive now is laughable. Not funny laughable but outrageous laughable. For every person who thoughtlessly and carelessly uses their benefits there are dozens or hundreds or thousands who depend on them to survive and who use them to the greatest benefit for their families. The problem is not misuse although that does exist. The problem is the great unfairness and inequities in how the wealth of this nation is distributed. Our national philosophy is built on the notion that if one works hard then great success is possible but that has turned into a myth. Over the past thirty years a person in Europe has a greater chance of bettering himself than does a person in the United States of America and we need to ask ourselves why that is. What changed, what happened and what is going to happen to us if we continue down that path?

People like simple answers but the answers are not simple any more and require not just planning but long term planning and the people we elect are too worried about the short term to do that. There is just no incentive for them to do so. If you think they should do it out of a desire for public service you are right but most people just don't do that. Most of us are pretty self-centered. As I said, nourishment is key to education and education is key to success. All of us have looked around us and seen kids that don't stand a chance due to the environment in which they live. If they make it out of there it will be an exception rather than the rule. As a matter of fact, if the children of any of us rise above our station in life it will now be the exception rather than the rule and that is wrong.

One of the things the food stamp program needs is more, not less. And not just more food benefits but also more social workers on the job. One can't expect administration of this program to be efficient without those people who go into the homes and educate those people on nutrition, cleanliness and help nurture in them a desire to do better. Unfortunately, when we cut costs those people are the first to go. How on earth can we expect the public's assistance to the poor to be effective without the workers who go into the homes? Our social programs are not supposed to be just giveaways. They were comprehended to be a force that would help lift the beneficiary out of poverty and into a productive and taxpaying life but we cut the legs off those programs with our short-sighted zeal to cut costs in the short term but all the while increasing the need in the long term. When the red ink zealots took up the pen those who held those cushy government jobs were the first to go.

Now, the Congressman made an attempt to lay the large number of benefit recipients in his district at the feet of the President and the “War on Coal” which is a craven attempt to divert attention from his own party's responsibility and onto the party of the President. It may work, it certainly has been successful in the past in getting people to vote against their own self interests but it certainly won't be truthful.

But the food stamp program only touches the worst of the problem of hunger. Even more insidious is the desperation of the “working poor.” Those who actually have a low wage job that doesn't pay enough to feed the family and who are relying on food banks and charity to make ends meet. Does that sound like the “greatest nation in the world” to you?

In what may be the best documentary of the year, “A Place at the Table” is available to watch or read. If you don't do anything else this year take the time to watch or read this. It examines the critical issue of food inequity in our country. It won't be pleasant but sometimes it hurts to be shown the ugliness.

My take on just one of the injustices inflicted on our people. Stay tuned. Let me know whether or not you think about things like this.