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Currently there are roughly around 50 million people in America on food stamps. This program is officially referred to as the politically correct sounding Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP. This federal program provides people with low or no income the ability to purchase food with Electronic Transfer Benefit or EBT cards. For years many have warned that since so many people are now dependent upon this program, ending it would result in widespread riots, looting and violence.
Considering that the federal government is on an unsustainable fiscal path as the world's largest debtor nation it is quite possible that it will soon become impossible for this program to continue. Interestingly enough we got a taste of what could happen when the system that processes EBT cards went down for a short period of time over the weekend.
Officially a systems glitch is being blamed for the outage after a test of the EBT backup system resulted in a system failure. The outage affected at least 17 states including Alabama, California, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia. The outage lasted throughout Saturday until the systems were restored later that evening. Even though the system was only down for a matter of hours, panic immediately ensued. One Massachusetts grocery store reported having to turn away roughly 50 percent of their customers due to their inability to process EBT cards. In Maine carts filled with groceries were left behind by shoppers at different stores. At a Mississippi Wal-Mart customers rioted upon finding out that they could not accept their EBT cards forcing the store to close. Similar situations occurred across the country with reports on social networking sites indicating that many folks were ready to riot.
During the course of the outage at least two Wal-Mart stores in Louisiana began processing EBT cards with no purchase limit. Immediately EBT card holders began filling up their carts with as much as they would hold to take advantage of the glitch. This resulted in chaos with police finally called in to restore order. Photos and videos have emerged showing bare shelves and an endless amount of abandoned grocery carts filled with huge quantities of food. Even though Wal-Mart as a company sucks, one has to question the morality of these people that rushed at the chance to take advantage of the broken system.
It is unbelievable that we saw such widespread civil disturbances with the system only going down for half a day. The amount of rioting and looting we would see if the system were to go down for any extended length of time would be unimaginable. With approximately 50 million people or about 15% of the country unable to eat there is little doubt that such a huge amount of hungry people would be a dangerous force to reckon with. Although some people on food stamps are genuinely in need of assistance, many others are just lazy or immoral people mooching off the system. The story in the previous paragraph is anecdotal evidence proving that there are many people on food stamps who fit this description. These individuals will create an incredibly chaotic situation across America if the government is no longer able to finance the food stamp program.
Considering the economic problems America faces with the out of control debt, the enormous deficits, a declining currency and a myriad of other problems, the chances of the government being unable to sustain the food stamp program is becoming a much greater concern. EBT cards are nothing more than the modern day version of the soup and bread lines we saw during the Great Depression of the 1930s. In fact the widespread use of EBT cards has helped reinforce the propaganda claiming that we are in the midst of an economic recovery when we are obviously not. People with their EBT cards look as if they are purchasing groceries just like everyone else so the true economic impact of what is happening is not nearly as visible as it was during the 1930s.
It is truly sad that we have such a large dependency class in America but it is a reality that must be accepted. The food stamp program really should be phased out over a lengthy period of time as this like other government assistance programs is ripe with abuse and fraud. Not to mention, private charity groups have historically done a much more efficient job at taking care of the poor versus the government.
Unfortunately if this program gets cut off cold turkey we will see madness unleashed and this is proven based off of what we saw this weekend. Some have argued that this outage may have been deliberately engineered to see what would happen if they had to suspend the program. This could be debated either way, but what cannot be debated is what will happen when close to 50 million people are suddenly unable to feed themselves. This group of people will be incredibly dangerous and unpredictable. Let's just hope that when this occurs they will lash out at the party responsible for this awful mess and not average Americans. The federal government is clearly to blame for this terrible situation and that's where their anger should be directed. It is sad to say that there is a very good chance that this will not happen and many Americans who had nothing to do with this will be victimized by mobs of hungry and desperate people in the process.
There is no reference in the above article to the shipping of jobs overseas, the collapse of the manufacturing sector, the paltry minimum wage that can not support life, the meltdown caused by the big banks, the homelessness, the natural disasters many of which are man made, the high cost of medicine and healthcare. I'm really offended by the article especially since the unthinkable has already happened: the House did cut food stamps from the Farm Bill - no school breakfasts and lunches for kids who had no breakfast.
There is, and this article is representative of this mode of thinking, a strong moralistic judgment that the well off pass on the poor.
The Senate will probably not pass this bill into law.
[Link]
House Republicans Pass Deep Cuts in Food Stamps
By RON NIXON
Published: September 19, 2013
WASHINGTON — House Republicans narrowly pushed through a bill on Thursday that slashes billions of dollars from the food stamp program, over the objections of Democrats and a veto threat from President Obama.
Doug Mills/The New York Times
The bill passed narrowly despite efforts by the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, who spoke at a news conference on Thursday.
Related
Anti-Hunger Advocates Put Pressure on Lawmakers Over Food Stamp Bill (September 19, 2013)
Related in Opinion
Editorial: Another Insult to the Poor (September 20, 2013)
The vote set up what promised to be a major clash with the Senate and dashed hopes for passage this year of a new five-year farm bill.
The vote was 217 to 210, largely along party lines.
Republican leaders, under pressure from Tea Party-backed conservatives, said the bill was needed because the food stamp program, which costs nearly $80 billion a year, had grown out of control. They said the program had expanded even as jobless rates had declined with the easing recession.
“This bill eliminates loopholes, ensures work requirements, and puts us on a fiscally responsible path,” said Representative Marlin Stutzman, Republican of Indiana, who led efforts to split the food stamps program from the overall farm bill. “In the real world, we measure success by results. It’s time for Washington to measure success by how many families are lifted out of poverty and helped back on their feet, not by how much Washington bureaucrats spend year after year.”
But even with the cuts, the food stamp program would cost more than $700 billion over the next 10 years.
Republicans invoked former President Bill Clinton in their defense of the bill, saying that the changes were in the spirit of those that he signed into law in 1996 that set work requirements for those who receive welfare.
But Democrats, many of whom held up pictures of people they said would lose their benefits, called the cuts draconian and said they would plunge millions into poverty.
“It’s a sad day in the people’s House when the leadership brings to the floor one of the most heartless bills I have ever seen,” said Representative James McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts. “It’s terrible policy trapped in a terrible process.”
The measure has little chance of advancing in the Senate, and Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan and the chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, called it “a monumental waste of time.”
The bill, written under the direction of the House majority leader, Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia, would cut $40 billion from the food stamp program over the next 10 years. It would also require adults between 18 and 50 without minor children to find a job or to enroll in a work-training program in order to receive benefits.
It would also limit the time those recipients could get benefits to three months. Currently, states can extend food stamp benefits past three months for able-bodied people who are working or preparing for work as part of a job-training program.
“This bill makes getting Americans back to work a priority again for our nation’s welfare programs,” House Speaker John A. Boehner said.
The bill would also restrict people enrolled in other social welfare programs from automatically becoming eligible for food stamps.
In addition, the legislation would allow states to require food stamp recipients to be tested for drugs and to stop lottery winners from getting benefits. The Senate farm bill also contains a restriction on lottery winners.
Critics of the measure said the cuts would fall disproportionately on children.
“Yes, the federal government has budget problems, but children didn’t cause them, and cutting anti-hunger investments is the wrong way to solve them,” said Bruce Lesley, president of First Focus Campaign for Children, a child advocacy group.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, nearly four million people would be removed from the food stamp program under the House bill starting next year. The budget office said after that, about three million a year would be cut off from the program.
The budget office said that, left unchanged, the number of food stamp recipients would decline by about 14 million people — or 30 percent — over the next 10 years as the economy improves. A Census Bureau report released on Tuesday found that the program had kept about four million people above the poverty level and had prevented millions more from sinking further into poverty. The census data also showed nearly 47 million people living in poverty — close to the highest level in two decades.
Historically, the food stamp program has been part of the farm bill, a huge piece of legislation that had routinely been passed every five years, authorizing financing for the nation’s farm and nutrition programs. But in July, House leaders split the bill’s farm and nutrition sections into separate measures, passing the farm legislation over Democrats’ objections.
The move came after the House rejected a proposed farm bill that would have cut $20 billion from the food stamp program. Conservative lawmakers helped kill the bill, saying the program needed deeper cuts.
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