Tom Corbett thinks you should starve if you're poor and trying to save up some money.
Just when you thought Republicans could not get more barbaric, the Governor of Pennsylvania has decided to reinstate an asset test for recipients of SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps), which means that someone who has assets (not including their house and first car, although a second car worth over $4,650 will count) that are worth a total of greater than $2,000 will no longer be eligible for government assistance to purchase food. The bar is $3,250 for people over 60 years old or who have a disability. This is a policy that knows no shame. So if you have more than that amount of money in the bank, you need to spend it on food until the Governor has determined you're poor enough to get help.
This means that people who have barely enough saved up for a major car repair or who have some money they've inherited that they're saving for an emergency - or even those with a valuable family heirloom - will all be forced to make the choice of losing what little they're holding onto or starving.
But not only that, the Governor is actually willing to hurt the Pennsylvania economy and spend more of Pennsylvanians' tax-payer dollars to keep food out of the mouths of the impoverished, the elderly, and the disabled.
Former PA Governor Ed Rendell and US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack agree that due to the administrative costs of changing who is eligible for the program, there is a good chance Pennsylvania tax-payers will wind up spending more money to take food from the hungry than it would have cost to feed them. Community Legal Services' Richard Weishaupt has lent credence to this prediction by pointing out that every red cent of actual SNAP benefits is paid for by the federal government, not the states. The states pay nothing for the benefits, and even split the administrative costs in half with the federal government.
And since all the SNAP benefit money that is spent on food comes from the federal government, that makes it an undeniable economic factor. This is not money that's going to be in the PA economy in one form or another anyway. The more money coming into Pennsylvania for SNAP, the more money spent on food, the more vibrant the economy, the more jobs in Pennsylvania. In fact, reporter Ray Rauanheimo says for every $1 PA gets in SNAP money, the PA economy gets a boost of $1.70 that helps a variety of industries.
Evidently, Governor Corbett is more than willing to hurt the Pennsylvania economy - and, in turn, kill Pennsylvania jobs - and increase the amount of money Pennsylvania has to spend on the SNAP program to please his rabid right-wing base by taking food off the table for thousands of hungry Pennsylvanians. A despicable, soulless political move if ever there was one.