Welfare Reform 2.0: alleviating hunger is a moral hazard
by digby
You've got to hand it to these misanthropic wingnuts. They don't suffer from a surfeit of self-awareness, that's for sure:
At a sugar lobby symposium at a Napa resort, of all places, Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas) chose to champion the cuts last month, preaching of “certain moral hazards we’ve built into most social safety net programs” — like food stamps. This from a commodity chairman who had just voted to make the sugar program permanent law and begin a new 80 percent taxpayer-financed insurance premium subsidy for cotton. Who writes this stuff: Jonathan Swift?
The editorializing is from a Politico writer. Politico. That's how outrageous these comments really are.
These Republicans are calling this "welfare reform 2.0". Because when people become dependent on government assistance for food they lose the ability to work. Or something.
Meanwhile a new report on poverty in the US is expected tomorrow. Here's what the watchers are anticipating:
We predict that it will tick down just a bit. Based on recent and forecast poverty rates and unemployment rates, our projections suggest an overall 2012 poverty rate of 14.8% and 21.4% for children, very similar to the 2011 rates of 15.0 and 21.9, respectively. This translates to roughly 46.5 million people in the US in poverty in 2012, of whom 16 million are children. For a single mother with two children, this means living with an annual cash income under $18,500.
By the way, those rich single mothers with children are among those lazy bums those Republicans believe have developed a culture of dependency on food and must be taught a lesson.
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