Posted on 03/17/2010 5:43:59 AM PDT by WOBBLY BOB
A Senate panel looks at legislation Tuesday that would allow more people to qualify for food stamps.
The bill from Democratic Sen. Linda Berglin of Minneapolis would repeal a requirement to show no more than $7,000 in assets such as cash, money in the bank and stocks to qualify for food support. Vehicles already are not counted.
(Excerpt) Read more at wcco.com ...
Have to say that I disagree.
Two workers, both making the same income.
You scrimped and saved before you got laid off? Well, no assistance until you deplete your savings and don’t have two dimes to rub together.
Meanwhile, the person who spends every dime he earns, gets assistance immediately.
Both paid the same taxes, both worked the same length of time. How is it fair that the person who saved and scrimped has to deplete their savings, before getting assistance?
Saving should include saving food. I’ve seen plenty of pimp daddies in section 8 driving $40k Escalades.
Why do we rarely see anyone rob a grocery store...of food?
You are correct. Scrap the entire program so as to not rob Peter to pay Paul, cuz that isn’t “fair”, either.
i took a 25% salary cut and my wife was laid off...i had plenty of money in a 401k and tried to take some out to make ends meet....i was told that i had to wait until we went into default on bills and then get letters of hardship from creditors in order to qualify to withdraw some of MY money to keep us from going into default...makes sense doesn’t it....don’t let someone help themselves with their own money, let them ruin their credit etc first....
Free! Let’s give everything to everyone for FREE! Yea...that’s the American way. Work is overrated. It is unhist that everybody does not have everything FREE!!!!!
Free! Let’s give everything to everyone for FREE! Yea...that’s the American way. Work is overrated. It is unjust that everybody does not have everything FREE!!!!!
It's not fair, not by a long shot. But the remedy is not to extend "assistance" to everyone. A return to a system primarily based on private charity would return both fairness and accountability to helping those in needs. As usual, Liberals outsource our basic human responsibilities to government, which then does an extremely poor job of being moral or even human.
Americans are highly generous, but also pragmatic. If Uncle Sam makes them "give at the office," and give and give and give, and creates a permanent underclass dependent upon Uncle Sam as the middleman for Americans' forced "charity," this unfair and unaccounted for forced "charity" impacts how private charitable efforts go.
If Americans "had" to help each other, because the guvmint kept the hell out of the way, you'd see very efficient and effective, targeted programs spring up in every locale to help those in need, especially right in those in those specific locales.
Even if people had to - gasp! - pay their own medical bills, first, costs would come way down. Second, if a family could not afford a certain treatment, I can guarantee fellow citizens would give if it were a worthy cause. Libs, though, have taken away not only most of our motivation to help others, but also the opportunity. It's often a fool's errand to pay more (on top of what Uncle Sam already confiscated from me) for "charity" when the guvmint wastes my "forced charitable giving" in the first place.
Frankly I am a bit surprised that with the DFL party hanging around Minnesota was able to pass any limits in the first place
I wonder why the gubermint doens’t change the IRS rules to allow penalty-free withdraws from 401ks/IRA during this “unexpected” recession?
Can you still get smokes with MN foodstamps? I know you used to be able to.
isn’t that irony?
Any government program that picks winners and losers is a dreates as many problems as it solves. Every government program that is charity disguised as subsidy is illegal. Taking money from a worker in Iowa at the point of a gun, and giving it to a non worker in New Jersey is just wrong.
maybe becasue our 401k’s are next on their hitlist....
Returning to a system primarily based on private charity also provides a great motivation to good citizenship. That's the thing about private charity. Yes, you can be a bum and still get fed in the church soup kitchen. Nothing wrong with that. The poor will be with us always and it's our obligation as humans to help.
But big-time, above the basic-call-of-duty community charity, especially because of how private fund-raising works, would end up going mostly to people who are at least trying to pull their own weight and not living so stupidly as to be causing their own most expensive problems.
You can readily see that a bake sale for leukemia treatments for a two-year-old will raise more money than a bake sale for new dentures for the town drunk who busted his chops, again, in a DUI that, BTW, killed the star high school quarterback.
Now some people will say THAT's not fair. So be it. Libs never think an asset-test OR a moral-test is fair. And it's not, literally, if it's the guvmint doing the giving. But private individuals can, do and SHOULD make such judgments. There would be charitable organizations that help people in all kinds of situations. But as a charitable giver, you would determine the types of situations your money addressed.
I agree with you. The food stamp program should be a safety net not life support. If they permitted families with more assets to be eligible for food stamps, then perhaps they could recover financially before the food stamp program becomes a necessity for life support. Of course you would have to limit the time they could remain on food stamps while still holding on to their assets.
By not counting vehicles they insure that all of those wishing to scam the system will place all of their assets in expensive vehicles.
It is an error to assume that food stamps are like welfare. How would you feel about food stamps if they both saved you money, and stabilized food prices? That is, food stamps matter on the *production* side as much as they do on the *consumption* side.
Even during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, one of America’s biggest problems was food over-production, while at the same time, people were starving. So the government destroyed a lot of food, and gave away a bunch more.
And the problem is still there. The government pays farmers to not grow food, pays markets to stabilize prices, and pays a lot to warehouse hundreds of tons of food until it rots. Billions of dollars every year for decades.
But if food is given away through food stamps, it immediately saves money and stabilizes prices. Ironically, since the best bargains with food stamps are with fresh food, they do not drive up the price of processed foods, which are more preferred by paying customers.
So why not?
I used to do maintenance at section 8 places years ago.
It never ceased to amaze what the ‘po folk’ were driving.
No Booze, Cigarettes, or Fancy Cars for Welfare Recipients in AZ
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2451996/posts
good idea.
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