GOP Way Too Busy To Fix $5 Billion Food-Stamp Cut

The House is calling it a session today and won't resume tormenting us until November 12, praise The Great Pumpkin. In the meantime, an automatic, across-the-board $5 billion reduction in the SNAP food assistance program will take effectNovember 1, when a provision of the 2009 stimulus expires. Obviously it makes zero sense to let this happen -- unemployment is still high, wages are still low, the economy is still barely growing, and SNAP is an "effective and efficient" palliative for all these problems, so naturally "GOP leaders are struggling to come up with an agenda to fill the 19 legislative days that are left in 2013." (It turns outblocking all NOBAMA'S appointments doesn't take up too much time!) We could hem and haw about this per usual, but instead let's imagine what we'd say if we actually believed all the GOP's intellectually and morally bankrupt arguments against helping poor people buy small amounts of food. We already feel dirty!

Alright, ready? Deep breath, clear your mind, you are now... a wingnut.

GrrrrrrrrrrrrrrOk, well, obviously if you are going to give poor people a small amount of food, for free, they will not have any incentive to work. It's like when you feed a cat, and suddenly the cat's refusing to even apply for gainful employment! We used to have a lot of hungry immigrants in this country, and they all became billionaires, remember? It was because they were hungry. Heck, they even watched their kids die sometimes! Talk about bootstraps!

Also, there was this one guy I saw who used his food stamp card to buy fast food, and he had money, I saw it! That proves that everyone is doing fraud on the welfare. Also, sometimes welfare people have cars. I don't care whether it costs more to root out fraud than we save by rooting out fraud, it's the moral aspect of it.

And speaking of the moral aspect, how is it fair that the money I earned 100% on my own is going to help these losers? These US dollars I have in my pants pocket may have been printed by the Federal Reserve and given value by the enduring strength and stability of the United States government, but it's me who runs the Tilt-O-Whirl, damn it.

And let's not forget how the extremely low effective US tax rates are killing all the businesses! I don't care if the United States is already more than competitive with other countries, and I don't care that we have massive advantages in terms of population, natural resources, arable land, infrastructure, and coasts on both major oceans that could probably support even higher rates! I don't care, taxes are bad! Immoral! BECAUSE! MINE!

Oh, and the debt, holy hell that debt! Yeah, so what if those economists who said high debt hurts economic growth weren't too good with their math, and nobody has yet come close to proving the US's debt levels endanger economic growth. Don't you just feel it in your gut that debt is bad? It's debt! It's bad! Come on! Big numbers! Children! DEBT!

Finally, black people use food stamps. The end.

[ Politico / Reuters / WND / / Tax Policy Center ]