Last month, the U.S. Congress finally passed the farm bill. Originally, Republicans had demanded that $40 billion be cut from the food stamp program. Democrats wheedled and argued until they came up with a much smaller cut of $8 billion which was to come from saving on the heat-and-eat program.
The heat-and-eat program is designed to help families who face overly-large heating bills--and who hasn't had that problem this past Winter? The idea is, that if a family qualifies for state heating assistance--assistance that pays only a small portion of their heating bill--then their monthly federal food stamp amount is increased by something around $90 so they don't have to choose between heating their home and eating.
In the past, some states have paid a token $1 toward a family's heating bill and the federal government has then increased their food stamp amount. Congressional Republicans thought they had found a way to stop what they saw as a greedy money grab. They negotiated the heating bill requirement so that a state must provide at least $20 in heating assistance before a family qualified for additional food stamp money. Their reasoning was that states would not want to pay $20 per family. Democrats went along with it, (after all, an $8 billion cut is a lot better than the $40 Republicans originally sought.)
what eye thynk: Republicans were feeling pretty smug that they had managed to keep food stamps out of the hands of hungry families--until several states called their bluff.
So far, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Oregon, Massachusetts, Vermont and Montana have started providing a minimum of $20/month in heating assistance to poor families. To the shock and dismay of Washington Republicans, even Governor Tom Corbett (R) agreed to the program.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) described the turn of events this way, "Since the passage of the farm bill, states have found ways to cheat once again on signing up people for food stamps. And so I would hope that the House would act to try to stop this cheating and this fraud from continuing."
I'm not sure how Mr. Boehner thinks these states' actions qualifies as "cheating" or "fraud." The states are doing exactly what the farm bill--which Mr. Boehner and his fellow Republicans supported and helped to pass--requires of them.
Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy responded that Mr. Boehner's assessment of the states' efforts to provide for the poor was "shameful." In a letter to Mr. Boehner, he wrote: "Your demonization of states that have elected to provide this benefit impugns the children, the elderly, the disabled, the low-wage workers and veterans who receive such aid by implying that they are a party to something criminal."
As the New York Times suggested last week: "If Mr. Boehner really wants to crack down on cheating, he might look to the carried-interest tax loophole, which allows hedge fund managers to mischaracterize their income as capital gains and costs the Treasure $11 billion a year--far more than extra dollars for food stamps. In his world, fraud occurs only when the government helps those who need it the most."
Mr. Boehner sounds an awful lot like a bullying adolescent brat who just found out that the kid he thought he stomped into the ground last week is actually alive and well and going to DisneyWorld. What's next, stamping his feet and crying?
No comments:
Post a Comment