John Wilder's latest post is "Oh, SNAP: The Waste, The Fraud, The Envy, And You’re Not Alone." He offers some thoughts (and memes ... lots of memes) about the government shutdown (yes, it's still going if you haven't noticed) and the imminent threat of the suspension of SNAP benefits (previously known as "food stamps"). But don't worry. Judge Indira Talwani of the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts has signaled that she may order the Trump Administration to dip into an emergency fund to continue funding SNAP benefits. Speaking at a hearing yesterday (Thursday) she said:
... “Right now, Congress has put money in an emergency fund for an emergency, and it’s hard for me to understand how this isn’t an emergency when there’s no money and a lot of people are needing their SNAP benefits."
“Congress told you what to do if there is no money. You need to figure out how to stretch that emergency money for now," Talwani, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama in September 2013, continued.
It appears that the USDA is arguing that the contingency fund can be used to for shortfalls where funding has been authorized by Congress, there has been no such authorization in this case because the funding authorization expired at the end of the fiscal year. It also appears that the USDA had already diverted some other funds to continue funding SNAP for October.
I'm not as heartless about this as you might think. I actually feel for many of the people on SNAP benefits. I don't have current statistics, but every few years or so, I see articles discussing the number of a service members--the lower ranking ones with young families--who receive SNAP/food stamp benefits. When my wife and I were in college, she was friends with a woman whose husband was just starting out as Sheriff's Deputy and they had a small child and, yes, they were receiving food stamps. A lot of employers get away with paying crappy wages because they assume that their employees will qualify for welfare assistance. And I knew students with young families that were also receiving food stamps. But these--the students, the service members, those starting out in low paying jobs--are not the problem because they will eventually earn more and pay taxes more than sufficient to make up for receiving SNAP benefits over the short term. And sometimes because of medical or mental problems, age, or such, some people cannot work (or are very limited in what they can do) and will receive welfare for a long period of time--perhaps most of their life. I cannot begrudge helping them out: "There but for the grace of God go I," and all that.
But here is the problem with the Democrats: they are using food (in this case, SNAP) as a political weapon, which makes them no different from African warlords and dictators who control who gets the food from international aid agencies.
This debacle may offer an opportunity to not "fix" but "improve" (for various values of "improve") multple fed dot gov redistribution programs, beginning with SNAP.
ReplyDeleteThere's no question SNAP, or something like it, is a neccessity for a compassionate society, but that does not rule out making it more efficient or more accurate in whom receives benefits. Ran across an essay a couple days ago (linked from Insty but I can't find it now) suggesting SNAP (and with veiled hinting that other programs could follow) be migrated to the states and supported financially with a block grant. That would place operational control closer to the citizens who need assistance, as well as focusing user demand more closely to ithe ssuer, and allow tailoring based on local conditions, assuming there's enough intelligence driving the whole thing to recognize that different states would have slightly different requirements (primarily in dollar cost for similar nutritional values) and block grant amounts would have to be adjusted accordingly.
Despite the stunning level of Democrat caterwauling such a move would provoke, I don't see much of a downside. We, after all, live in the United States of America, not "America, with a huge monolithic federal government and fifty insignificant political subdivisions." Citizens usually stand a much better chance of modifying, and controlling, government actions at the local and state level than they do in D.C.
Irv
I honestly wonder how much better religious organizations would do organizing such programs with our willing donations than the feds with our required donations.
ReplyDeleteEither way, no I really wouldn't have noticed except that my tenured professors (who aren't on welfare) keep complaining about SNAP.