A year ago I had an argument with a fellow American about food stamps. We were having breakfast in a four star hotel in Mumbai, India and, needless to say, neither of us was exactly starving to death. The argument started because my husband overheard him tell his colleague that people on food stamps were just spending it on steak and cigarettes. We thought it was important to disabuse him of a few notions.
1) You can’t use food stamps to buy cigarettes.
2) Sure, you can buy steak with food stamps, but you’ll be out of money within a few days. The benefits are pretty meager. The SNAP program was meant to keep people from starving to death, not living like corporate CEOs. If he wanted to see what it looks like when someone starves to death (literally) all the man in the Mumbai hotel needed to do was step outside his door. There’s a reason we try to keep that from happening to people.
3) Drug testing people who receive government benefits such as disability, food stamps and welfare is a waste of time and resources. It’s already been tried. Few people test positive and it wastes tax payer money. The guy in the hotel was stubbornly insisting that he would happily pay more taxes to drug test everyone on public assistance. He just didn’t want to waste that money feeding them.
Fast forward a year and Republican representatives are congratulating themselves for cutting food aid to some of our most vulnerable citizens. In a pointed speech, California Congresswoman Jackie Speier points out that many of these representatives have absolutely no problem living off public largess while gutting aid to poverty stricken citizens.