Food Stamps and the Poor

from justmeans.com

The other day, a posting on Facebook included a brief, snarky article (from a group called “American Commitment”) comparing the food stamp program to feeding wild animals in parks with scraps, so that they become dependent upon the handouts. Thus, says the article’s author, is what our current government is up to: encouraging dependency.

"Nice" that the author compared poor people to animals. The thing is: many people do rely on food stamps, are helped by them, and do not seek them because they are lazy and dulled into a state of dependency (the stereotype). As I wrote in my 7/27/12 post, the practical solutions are not easy as we try to balance private charitable efforts for the poor and some kind of government assistance.  But I never think that stereotyping and despising the poor, in the name of criticizing a president (or Congress) whom you don’t like, is an answer.  (Not to keep referencing myself, LOL, but I’ve written about the biblical concern for the poor----God’s will that we take the side of the poor, however that alliance might be practically expressed: http://paulstroble.wordpress.com/2009/12/21/the-poor-and-needy/

I post articles on Facebook sometimes but I dislike conducting political arguments there; the discussion isn't face to face and nuanced, and thus lacks crucial elements of mutual caring and dialogue.  So to help myself feel better and less frustrated by that snarky article, I looked around online so I could think about this whole issue.  I found this essay from (admittedly a liberal magazine) The New Republic: http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/104921/republican-conservative-cut-snap-food-stamps-obama-bush Jonathan Cohn’s July 12, 2012 article, “The Factually Challenged, Morally Questionable Assault on Food Stamps,” comments that conservatives are not just criticizing President Obama about food stamps, but also President Bush!  Cohn notes that “It's just one more sign of how extreme mainstream conservatives and their Republican allies have become.”

Food stamps---actually called the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP)---have been facing cuts in funding. Cohn writes that the program has indeed grown considerably recently, much of it during Obama’s administration. “But there was a good reason .... People couldn’t find work! As the Congressional Budget Office has concluded, the primary reason for recent enrollment increases is the recession and its aftermath. Many more people have been out of work or losing incomes. As a result, many more have needed financial assistance in order to put food on the table.”

He continues that “conservatives haven’t given up attacking Obama. Instead, they’ve decided to Bush, too.” He quotes the National Review: “Newt Gingrich famously calls Barack Obama ‘the food-stamp president.’ But the first president worthy of the moniker was George W. Bush... Bush began a recruitment campaign. In the same vein, the Obama administration is running radio ads hailing food stamps as a way to lose weight...." But Cohn points out that "SNAP enrollment rose during the Bush years in part because, even when unemployment was low, poverty was high. And with more people in poverty, there were more people who needed assistance paying for food.”  Thank goodness Presidents Bush and Obama have supported this program. Cohn argues that SNAP recipients are actually people who work (not the stereotype of idle people sucking up handouts from the government) and may even encourage poor people to work because the program contains a work incentive. Please read the article for more detailed discussion than I should summarize and quote here.

I want to continue thinking about this and talking to people, because although I've worked some with the poor I've no personal experience with the SNAP program.

Cohn also quotes Washington Monthly writer Ed Kilgore that explains some of the controversy, and I do understand Kilgore’s point. “[W]e have to remember that this is an ideological and even a moral issue to conservatives, who view dependence on any form of public assistance as eroding the ‘moral fiber’ of the poor (as Paul Ryan likes to put it), and as corrupting the country through empowerment of big government as a redistributor of wealth from virtuous taxpayers to parasites who will perpetually vote themselves more of other people’s money.” I just don't think keeping someone from going hungry is ruining their moral fibre, if we can just think through how to help people in the best ways.  If I were to oversimplify the whole matter, I think liberals focus on "fairness" and short-term solutions to the detriment of the long term, while conservatives tend to despise short-term solutions (that would keep people for going hungry, for instance) for the sake of the long term.  

To be sincerely bipartisan, I wanted to mention a book that I read and mull: Patrick Garry’s Conservatism Redefined: A Creed for the Poor and Disadvantaged (Encounter Books, 2010). With concern for the poor and reasonable arguments, he points out ways that conservative ideology can be rethought and retooled in order to address the needs of the poor, not by marginalizing them but by incorporating them into the mainstream, and by stressing ethics and values in all areas of American society (for instance, the realtors and bankers who hurt poor people with the 2008-2009 meltdown).  He worries that, for instance, state budgets must spend more on "entitlement" programs than they do on elementary and secondary education.  In our current climate of extreme partisanship, I appreciate nuanced and thoughtful ideas that aim at the whole of society.