Scrooge Republicans prefer Pentagon White Elephants to Food Stamps for Poor Children
Posted on 11/01/2013 by Juan Cole
As of today, Republican cuts in food stamp support present a challenged nearly 23 million American households in keeping their children from hunger.Some 76% of SNAP or food stamp-receiving households include children, the elderly or a disabled person, and 83% of all SNAP assistance goes to such challenged households. The image of a single male lying on a couch drinking beer bought with food stamps is just cheap Scrooge propaganda.
Note that these families are in dire straits not because they are lazy but because Republican lawmakers reduced regulation and oversight of Wall Street banks and investment companies, who promptly engaged in unwise or illegal practices that crashed the US economy in 2008 and after. There has been no recovery to speak of for the non-rich since. Americans who resort to food stamps have increased by 25% in the past four years. So these struggling American families are being punished by the GOP twice– many of them lost their jobs because of bad banking practices or because the Bush economic downturn. And now the minor amelioration of their condition offered by the US government has been cut back.
These are the actions of a Scrooge ruling class, of mean rich white people (though in fact the majority of recipients of food stamps are also white). The same GOP congressmen ran up huge budget deficits for the benefit of their constituencies in the Bush era, and wasted over a trillion dollars on wars of aggression abroad, but now all of a sudden are interested in balanced budgets and austerity.
17% of Republicans say that someone in their household has received food stamps. Recipients are disproportionately young, including children, and disproportionately women. Only 22% of Latinos say they have used them. While African-Americans are twice as likely to have resorted to them as whites, since they are only 12% of the population, they are still a small minority of recipients.
Here are some things that Congress could have cut instead of food for poor children:
Development of the F-35 fighter jet will cost over $9 billion this year and $395.7 billion over all. It is corporate welfare of the first water, an enormous White Elephant, completely unnecessary at a time when the US military has nothing approaching a peer in the world. It is years behind schedule and 70% over budget. Canceling it would allow you to put back the $5 billion for food stamps for at least 80 years and probably more, since there will be more cost over-runs.
Then there is the SSN-774 Virginia-Class Submarine. Nothing wrong in principle with this item, but they cost $4.3 billion apiece, just about the cost of the food stamps that have just been cut. Republican standard-bearer Mitt Romney just last year ran on producing 3 of these submarines a year rather than two. In other words, he wanted to increase the budget deficit by nearly $5 bn a year for the sake of one extra submarine annually. If the GOP is willing to buy an extra submarine (which we don’t actually need– which of our enemies rules the underwater realm?) a year for that much, then it is hard to see why they are so pressed to cut $5 bn in food stamps.
The United States is spiralling down into a basic indecency and callousness not seen since the age of the Robber Barons of the late 19th century. The Koch brothers and other mean rich white people are intent on rolling back all the gains of the Progressive era and the New Deal, returning us to the jungle.
The only good thing about it is that sooner or later the sleeping giant that is the American people will be awakened by the lashes of injustice and the selfishness of a small coterie of the super-rich. And then perhaps we’ll get a new and more robust progressivism that will change the nation and the world.
§ 3 Responses to “Scrooge Republicans prefer Pentagon White Elephants to Food Stamps for Poor Children”
- With Saudi and Israeli self-interests focused like lasers on the destruction of Iran–and anyone allied with them–what do you think the chances are of the U.S. giving further aid to al-Maliki? We lost that war once. What are we going to do, lose it again?
- I have posted the gist of this before and I will post it again and again in comments, because it needs to be said until it sinks in, and if I sound like a broke record it is because I am addressing a broken system.I have worked off and on as a volunteer on hunger issues in recent years, and now spend most of my time running a small family farm. Last year I had a chance to hear a pediatrician from Harvard Medical in Boston speak at a large conference on childhood hunger in our nation. What impressed me the most about her talk was how paradoxically expensive hunger, and especially childhood hunger is for all of us.The main take away for me? Children who are hungry and malnourished generally do not develop into normal healthy adults. Many suffer from damaged immune systems, behavioral and mental problems, and lower intelligence. Imagine how lousy you feel if you are a few hours late for your lunch. Well, multiply that by a half-day, or day or two, then imagine that is being imposed on a developing human being. This is how our children, and many children of the world, suffer. Damaged immune systems in turn mean adult illnesses down the road, meaning stress on an already over-burdened health care system as well as lost productivity and wages from work. Behavioral problems can often result in aggression, resulting in violence and ultimately prison.In sum: lost productivity over a lifetime, health problems, prison, means expensive outlays by our health care providers, our schools (where many of the behavioral problems play themselves out), our criminal justice system, and at the same time a loss in revenue as we bandage these problems rather than addressing their root causes (at the dinner plate!). It is far cheaper to put give a child three square meals daily at government expense than it is to pay for the results of what certain elements in this country want to do by cutting SNAP or WIC.Food pantries, churches, and all private charities combined only make up at any one time 3-6% of the nourishment provided to the hungry in this country. Cut that out of the federal budget and you have effectively undercut all of the efforts of those private charities. What the government can do to address hunger by contrast is enormous.One South American country, Brazil, recently had the right idea (see:http://www.marketplace.org/topics/sustainability/food-9-billion/brazil-delivers-hunger-promise). They actually decided, rightly so, that food is a public resource, and access to good nutritious food is a fundamental human right. Nationally 16.7 million children live in homes with poor food security (go to: feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-facts/child-hunger-facts.aspx# to see the numbers). My home state of Oregon stands at the bottom (if you exclude DC), with over 29% (!) of our children at some point not having enough to eat, an absolute scandal in a region that is so rich in the production of excellent agricultural goods (particularly those that serve the elite, such as very expensive Pinot Noir).There is no weapons system that can address an alleged national security threat that is more serious than the very real damage and waste that we face daily as a result of not feeding our hungry.
- thanks for such an informed comment!
