The Sage Observer

Food Stamps

Forty-seven million Americans were hit by food stamp cuts on Friday, November 1^st, because, once again, certain people in our Congress have failed our country and our people. Temporary recession-era boosts to the federal food stamp program were allowed to end without a new budget from a deadlocked Congress to replace it. In addition, some of our illustrious representatives are working diligently to cut these benefits for our people even further. I have said to you before, our nation is in deep economic difficulty and threatening to sink even deeper. Just look around you. The parking lots of the malls and the restaurants may be full, but don’t be fooled. There are twenty million people either out of work or underemployed in this great country. We have two worlds around us, the “haves” and the “have-nots”; and many, if not all, of the “have-nots” are in dire straits economically. They need these benefits badly, and some will starve without them. I will, also, point out that many of the “haves” are living right on the “edge”, tilting toward joining the “have-nots” very soon.

The food stamp program, also referred to as SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program is part of the “farm bill”, which is administered by the Department of Agriculture with benefits distributed by the individual states. It constitutes approximately eighty percent of the “farm bill”, the Food, Conservation and Energy Act–$80 million per year, based on the year 2000.

Based on these brief pieces of information alone, I think it is more than fair to say that to even think of cutting the food stamp program in these days and times is absolutely idiotic, short-sighted, and irresponsible as well as heartless. We are no longer a nation of small farmers. In the main, our farms are huge industrial enterprises, many of which are owned and operated by some of our members of Congress. How does it make sense to take food from the mouths of the poor and give it, in effect, to the super rich? If we want to cut food stamps, let’s do it by putting the recipients of such back to work. Let’s give them jobs. Let’s pass the Jobs Bill. If you want to cut costs, lets eliminate farm subsidies–especially those to the “power elite”.

In closing, I want you to understand this. These are people who want to work. They really do. Being unemployed is not good for anybody–neither mentally nor physically. Those who say differently are either liars (you know who they are), seeking personal gain, or people who are very uninformed and myopic in their thinking. Yes. There are lazy people among the unemployed who do not and will not work, but don’t paint the vast majority of the people with the same brush as they. We cannot conduct our nation’s affairs based on the tiny few. We must manage our country based upon the reality of the majority. Let us get our nation back on track; which, if we really do, will negate our need for these things.

Ronald Miller

mtss86@comcast.net