Democrats: 1% Cut In Food Stamp Funding Is "Stealing"

Elected Democrats and movement progressives are up in arms over the meager cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP - commonly known as food stamps). Hot Air's Erika Johnsen covered the non-drama over the farm bill yesterday and noted the very meager reforms included in the legislation, but some Democrats are bemoaning the $800 million in yearly cuts to SNAP in apocalyptic terms. The overall SNAP program costs $70 billion per year.

Hipster congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said "Congress has lost its way" and described the farm bill as "reverse Robin Hood legislation that steals food from the poor." Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) described the 1% of the food stamp budget being cut as "essential nutritional assistance" in a time when SNAP enrollment and spending is at all-time highs. Jim McGovern said that the legislation "increases hunger."

All of this for a program whose expansion and cost has exploded in the Obama years. Some of this comes with the business cycle - the recession depressed many households' income, pushing them onto SNAP rolls - but when the economy is back at full speed the SNAP program is projected to remain at historical highs.

The Congressional Budget Office finds that spending on food stamps has risen from $30 million to $72 million in the Obama years, and it's not all attributable to the 2008 recession:

What these Democrats are saying is that not a single penny can be cut from a program that has ballooned in enrollment and spending over the last six years and will remain at historical highs in the future. It could be the case that the food stamp program is such an important program and that there was a starvation problem in America prior to this massive expansion, but that's not the argument that's being made - Democrats need to face up to the massive expansion in the food stamp program and defend it on the grounds of historical highs.

The SNAP program is indeed one of the least objectionable low-income assistance programs. The "radical" agenda of the Republicans would have cut the SNAP budget by around 3%, rather than the 1% that the final farm bill contains. Republicans don't want to repeal low-income food assistance - they're in favor of a more limited scope for a valuable program.

These two, short sentences tell us a lot about our government & our culture:

1)
We are advised to NOT judge ALL Muslims by the actions of a few lunatics, but we are encouraged to judge ALL gun owners by the actions of a few lunatics. Funny how that works.

And

2)
Seems we constantly hear about how Social Security is going to run out of money. How come we never hear about welfare running out of money? What’s interesting is the first group “worked for” their money, but the second didn’t.

Stealing? Here’s what ‘stealing’ is. In 2008, there was a table full of groceries that I could buy for $100. My $100 would purchase the entire table of groceries. Today I now have someone else competing for the groceries on that table. I show up with my usual $100. But now someone else shows up with $40 on their EBT card. This means that it now takes $140 to purchase the entire table of groceries. Yet I only have $100. So now I walk away with only 70% of those groceries, and the guy with the EBT card now walks away with the other 30%. And where did the $40 on the EBT card come from? It came from my paycheck. So as I see it, the guy with the EBT card is stealing 30% of my family’s groceries.

There are actually two major constitutional problems concerning cuts to the supplemental nutrition assistance program in the farm bill imo. In fact, "government" food stamp funding is already being stolen, but in a way that corrupt Congress doesn't want taxpayers to know about. Please bear with the following explanation.

To begin with, the states have never delegated to Congress, via the Constitution, the specific power to tax and spend for foodstamp purposes.

More specifically, and given the remote possibility that some freepers and lurkers aren't aware of this, Justice John Marshall had officially clarified that Congress cannot tax and spend for ANYTHING which it essentially cannot justify under its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers.

“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.

So the irony about corrupt Democratic federal lawmakers arguing that likewise corrupt RINOs are trying to steal food from needy citizens is the following. Based on Justice Marshall's clarification of Congress's limited power to lay taxes, Congress is already wrongly stealing state revenues that could be used for state food stamp programs, stealing such revenues in the form of constitutionally indefensible federal taxes.

And that's just one major constitutional problem with the vote-winning Democratic federal food stamp program. The other problem is with the farm bill itself.

In more precise terms, the Supreme Court has historically clarified, in terms of the 10th Amendment nonetheless, that the states have never delegated to Congress, via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate intrastate agriculture.

“From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited. None to regulate agricultural production is given, and therefore legislation by Congress for that purpose is forbidden (emphasis added).”—Mr. Justice Roberts(?), United States v. Butler, 1936.

Unfortunately, patriots who have evidently never been taught the federal govenment's constitutionally limited powers are unsurprisingly not seeing the forest for the trees concerning Section 8-unjustifiable earmark spending in this likely constitutionally indefensible federal farm aid bill.

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