Crossposted from our Main Street blog.
Two things that are going to remain shocking no matter how many times they play out: The fact that
About six million Americans receiving food stamps report they have no other income, according to an analysis of state data collected by The New York Times. In declarations that states verify and the federal government audits, they described themselves as unemployed and receiving no cash aid — no welfare, no unemployment insurance, and no pensions, child support or disability pay.
And how some legislators respond to the existence of people living on nothing but a couple hundred dollars a month in food stamps:
"This is craziness," said Representative John Linder, a Georgia Republican who is the ranking minority member of a House panel on welfare policy. "We’re at risk of creating an entire class of people, a subset of people, just comfortable getting by living off the government."
We’ve seen this before, of course. Remember the Missouri legislator who said that "hunger can be a positive motivator" when opposing a summer lunch program for kids?
But it is still shocking and appalling that anyone would think—or pretend to think, for the purposes of scapegoating others—that people would be comfortable living off the type and amount of food you can get for maybe $200 a month, with no money for anything else. That people who worked hard at jobs from physical labor to real estate sales would enjoy selling their blood, denying their children decent meals or new clothes, scavenging for discarded furniture to sell.
There are two ways you think people are comfortable with this: Either you just don’t think about it. You don’t think about how little food you can get for that money, and how many things food stamps don’t buy. Or you deny the basic humanity of food stamp recipients and tell yourself it doesn’t matter if they suffer.
Why you’d want to do that is another matter.