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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMeet the Republican who is demanding that the government let poor people starve
by Justin Doolittle
Stephen Fincher, a deranged Republican congressman from Tennessee, is very angry that the federal government is committed to preventing poor people from starving to death:
Republican Congressman Stephen Fincher of Tennessee, who supports cuts to the program, had his own Bible verse from the Book of Thessalonians to quote back to Vargas: The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat, he said.
The program in question is SNAP, better known as food stamps. Fincher and his ultra-right-wing friends in the House are furious about the fact that the worst economic crisis in 80 years has resulted in more Americans needing food stamps. The whole point of programs like SNAP and other automatic stabilizers, of course, is that they kick in when the economy is struggling and people need help. Fincher is shocked and horrified by this heinous policy of ensuring that poor people and their children don't starve. Food is to be earned! Sure, this is the richest country in the history in the world, but if we provide our citizens with food to eat, then freedom is obviously dead.
He fulminates about people who are allegedly "unwilling to work" sucking off the government teat with impunity. This is a patently dishonest representation of the SNAP program. Most people who receive food stamps cannot be dismissed as losers who are "unwilling to work." Nearly half (47%) of all food stamp recipients are children. Another 8% are 60 years of age or older. The "working poor" - people who live in a household with income from work - represent another 41%. Between children, the elderly, the working poor, and people who want a job but cannot find one - someone should tell Fincher that there are still more than 3 unemployed job seekers for every 1 opening - that leaves very few people who can be accurately described as being "unwilling" to work. It's also worth noting that the average monthly SNAP benefit is a whopping $287. It takes a deeply disturbed person to crusade against providing this class of people with food to eat, when the economy is this battered, and when the broad economic benefits of the program have been so well established (at least in the reality-based community).
Now, this would not normally be worthy of mention. Hardly a day goes by without some Republican sadist expressing fury that poor people have it so good. Devising new ways to make the peasants suffer is what makes Republicans wake up in the morning. What's fascinating about this particular case, though, is Fincher's background.
The reason this is even more egregious than the usual Republican class warfare is that Fincher himself is a poster boy for government dependency. It's not just that he's benefited here and there from some government help. That sort of low-level hypocrisy is almost to be expected from these types. But Fincher has received millions - $3.2 million as of June 2010 - in federal crop subsidies. The people who refer to themselves as Tea Partiers threatened to derail his candidacy over this, but then they realized that they have no principles, and supported him anyway. He's now a member of the "Tea Party Caucus," which, amazingly, is something that actually exists. Fincher's brother and father also snatched another $6.7 million in subsidies as Stephen geared up to run for Congress on a platform of eliminating "wasteful government spending." The "wasteful spending" that he had in mind, of course, was that which serves policy aims with which he disagrees, such as keeping poor people alive.
House Republicans are on a mission to slash the SNAP program by $20 billion over the next decade. A Senate committee, just last week, voted to cut it by "only" $4 billion. If some sort of vicious "compromise" is reached between the sociopaths in the House who are demanding human sacrifice on a massive scale, and the "moderates" in the Senate who are only comfortable with letting some people starve, it will not be pretty. This is not hyperbole, either. SNAP really does keep poor people, including millions of children, from going hungry, and it's under attack from ultra-right-wing ideologues. This program deserves the support and activism of progressives as much as any government program in existence.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/05/20/1210395/-Meet-the-Republican-who-is-demanding-that-the-government-let-poor-people-starve
These depraved assholes don't just hate Government, they hate people, especially the most vulnerable.
Note:
CurtEastPoint
(18,664 posts)you KNOW this guy has been receiving government money.
Cirque du So-What
(25,988 posts)when even a single seed is dropped in the soil on one's property? He's the epitome of a 'welfare recipient,' and although the teabaggers gave him shit over it, they probably rationalized that if he doesn't produce food of any sort, he's hastening starvation of the 'takers.'
denverbill
(11,489 posts)Because it seems to me an awful lot of people would like to work but can't find jobs.
It's fine with me cutting off benefits to anyone who is able but unwilling to work, as long as we guarantee that anyone who wants to work gets paid.
Marr
(20,317 posts)some fat, pampered idiots think they should. Making sure the poor have access to food is as much a protection for the rich as it is the poor.
Downwinder
(12,869 posts)The company has received $8.9 million in farm subsidies over the past decade.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Fincher
lame54
(35,326 posts)kestrel91316
(51,666 posts)Constitution we can find the Book of Thessalonians.
HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts)Whoever taught Stevie that isn't his friend.
Bandit
(21,475 posts)BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)Iliyah
(25,111 posts)they don't give a rats arse about nobody with their 1-2% partners in crime.
Zambero
(8,971 posts)It's the hellfire take no prisoners Old Testament passages that get quoted. So-called "Christians" don't seem to quote Christ himself all that much, particularly when it comes to how he admonished his followers to assist the sick, hungry, poor, and those different from themselves (as with the Good Samaritan parable). And yes, getting back to the passage from Book of Thessalonians, work and willingness to work is indeed virtuous, if and when work is available. And some who do work long and hard hours cannot begin to make ends meet, given anti-worker policies favored by Fincher and others of his political stripe.
Aviation Pro
(12,188 posts)...they want to be Jewish.
BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)librechik
(30,676 posts)so that every time she gets asked for spare change she can tell the beggar where it says in the Bible you should go starve, since you won't work.
I point out here that the operative word is "unwilling" not "unable" Christian charity still allows us to feed the women and children and those who cannot work.
And I also point out that there are still 5 applicants for every job. Being hungry has nothing to do with willingness to work, when there are no jobs.
And I blame the republicans for killing jobs, especially public jobs, as if they were not charity or necessity, but some kind of shameful payoff to evil people who are shirkers and moochers, not in deparate circumstances and needful.
BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)I'm so sorry...
librechik
(30,676 posts)spend most of their weekdays at the casino, then get all pious on Sunday.
BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)That must be pretty hard to deal with. I hope she doesn't regale you with sermons and call you a librul if possible and it somehow evens out with other forms of niceness and perhaps good Southern cooking.
sheshe2
(83,929 posts)No words
Cha
(297,723 posts)ProSense
(116,464 posts)type of callousness is typical of Republicans.
Oklahoma Senator Wont Support Tornado Relief Without Budget Cuts
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022877304
moondust
(20,006 posts)They used this back in the 50s and 60s when there were a lot of jobs as Americans built up America after the war. But millions of those jobs have now been moved to places like Bangladesh, Vietnam, and China so assholes like Fincher could make more profits off his investments.
Still stuck in the 50s, Congressman?