Welfare for the Wealthy
Mark Bittman on food and all things related.
The House is proposing $20 billion in cuts to food stamps — equivalent to “almost half of all the charitable food assistance that food banks and food charities provide to people in need", says Beckmann.
This pits the ability of poor people to eat, against direct payments to those who need them least.
Among them is Congressman Stephen Fincher, Republican of Tennessee, who justifies SNAP cuts by quoting 2 Thessalonians 3:10: “For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.”
Even if this quote were not taken out of context — whoever wrote 2 Thessalonians was chastising not the poor but those who’d stopped working in anticipation of the second coming — Fincher ignores the fact that Congress is a secular body that supposedly doesn’t base policy on an ancient religious text that contradicts itself more often than not.
The God-fearing Fincher is one of the largest recipients of U.S.D.A. farm subsidies in Tennessee history; he raked in $3.48 million in taxpayer cash from 1999 to 2012, $70,574 last year alone.
The average SNAP recipient in Tennessee gets $132.20 in food aid a month; Fincher received $193 a day. You can eat pretty well on that.
Avoid fatalism: Call your representative (or at least support those agencies that are doing so) and insist that payments to people like Fincher be ended. Let’s at least try to protect the poor, the environment and our national health.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/04/welfare-for-the-wealthy/?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y
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