The Diane Rehm Show

Good point edwards! how can we ever address and change this totally out of control government dependency mindset that grips our government and the people who feed off of it. Farmers that need this support are just as guilty as the irresponsible in life obese with their overflowing shopping carts of processed foods. The umbilical cord must be cut, but who in government has the guts to cut it.

I look forward to the heartless comments a discussion on food stamps is sure to generate.

Some people will say they must be cut, because it is immoral to raise taxes on the rich.

Some people will say the folks that get them are just lazy and they should get off their butts and get themselves one of those nonexistent jobs. Im sure that's what Jesus would say.

The reality of the problem is that we have two political parties in this country that are directly, and solely responsible for the rotten economy in this country that is causing so many of my fellow Americans to need this help. Between the two of them they wrote all the laws that made it easy to ship our jobs overseas. They deregulated the banksters so they could rob us blind. These two parties refuse to raise the minimum wage. They have made it pretty much impossible to for young jobless, or underemployed people to discharge their oppressive college debt.

We even have one party that wants to stop women from being able to terminate pregnancies that they either don't want or cant afford.

So we have two political parties that have done everything they could to crush the working classes in this country and now they want to start taking away the life support systems from poor they have done everything in their power to create.

The selfish powers in this country have worked at getting us to this point for close to two generations now. They are so close now to having a country kings and serfs that they can taste it. They are now going in for the final kill.

Many people who look down their noses at those who get food stamps now, will soon need them themselves, because the looters of this country aint done yet.

This is disgusting, and immoral. But many in this country just don't care about the poor anymore. As long as they still got theirs, nothing else matters.

From our earliest colonial times there have been overseers for the poor and indigent. During periods of hunger in New Jersey c. 1763-68 other colonies sent food and seed grain. Is it American to feed our poor? It has been for 400 years.
Eisenhower's Farewell Address warned us of the dystopia we live today. For every jet aircraft bought—a school will not be built. For every naval vessel—a highway will not be built.
President Eisenhower warned us of the unwarranted influence of the Military Industrial (Congressional) Complex. No one listened.

Whatsright wrote: "Why do you show a black person to illustrate the subject in this program when most people on public assistance and getting food stamps are white?"

The D.R. show is not above the fray when it comes to divisive politics. Baiting pictures used to highlight show topics is not unusual, the picture shown a couple days ago about gun control comes to mind. Having said that, black people per capita receive more government welfare than any other race so a logical argument could be made to use a black person as a typical welfare recipient.

Regarding "Edwards" comment about food stamps and farm bankruptcies in the '80s...a debt crisis gets the lion's share of blame, not an attempt to end food stamp programs. Farmers back then were highly leveraged because commodity prices and land values were rapidly rising and many farmers borrowed lots of money at very high interest rates. When Paul Volker and the Fed clamped down on the money supply to try to beat inflation, many farmers could no longer service their debt and had to sell out.

equalizer wrote:
In North Carolina, 1 in 4 children are poor. Many “at risk” schools have close to 100% of students receiving free lunches. I personally have seen children pack up their lunches to take home so that they may feed their families. Even the suggestion to reduce the meager assistance given to struggling families is appalling. Children need to eat! Are they to blame for their situation?

No their parents are, I also have seen with my own eyes people going to church food banks that are stocked by people that donate both food and money to a cause they believe in. Why is it so hard for people to understand that no one wants people to starve we just don't want the inefficient government to stick their collective nose in it. Religious organizations, community groups, and non-profits do it better and cheaper and go to the people in many cases instead of requiring them to go to you.

More baloney from the Right-Wing. We're not going broke. How about raising taxes on the rich, instead of punishing the poor (again)?

I am always impressed with how no one on your show seems to know a poor person--can you imagine living on, say, 22K a year with two or three kids? You might be above the poverty line but you struggle to pay your electric bill, school clothes, metro cards, and yes, food.
Why not look at such issues as Medicare fraud by providers, and not carp about tiny adjustments in how poor one needs to be.

It seems that if there are people on food stamps each year that do meet the requirements in order to actually Be on food stamps (abusing the system), that if congress were to focus on making the qualification process/renewal process more efficient, it would effectively serve the purpose of blanketed cuts without affecting those who need the system.

I don't think farm prices are tied THAT much to food stamps (edwards) but I have been wrong before personally I would like to see a link

The man that just said that there is no asset test on food stamps by the states, is just plain wrong. I was kicked off food stamps at the beginning of the year, even though I am unemployed and have no income at present. True, a car in MI. is not considered an asset, but how much money you have in a bank account are considered assets. In MI they lowered that amount to a laughable amount (something like $6000.00 as a single individual), and thereby threw me off the program. That money in the bank pays for rent, utilities, insurance, phone (yeah, that's right...I use a phone...how dare I, huh?). Please...get your commenters or "experts" to get their facts straight. At best, they could've adjusted my amount on the SNAP program, instead I was just kicked off. The idea that people are buying high end foods or unhealthy foods is a ruse to discredit the program. They simply have an anti-gov't bent, no matter what the facts are. They continue to demonize the poor and could care less whether they eat or not. Heartless and insincere.

Diane, At the grocery store, the other day the family in front of me was paying with food stamps, when I left the store both parents were standing out front lighting cigarettes. In Maryland, they cost $6 a pack that is over $300 a month in health damaging tobacco. This money could go for food and everybody would better off, the parents, children, and taxpayers.

The food stamp program should be reformed to follow the WIC program in that recipients can use that "money" to purchase certain items - there is a hugh selection of items that fall under WIC. There is nothing wrong with reforming a program that doesn't work. If does not mean we want people to be hungry, but those people must make good choices and not take advantage of a program funded by taxpayers.

I used to think this too, Patsy, that Americans' behavior belies their claims to be a part of a Christian nation. Now my thinking has come to align more with a quote attributed to Gandhi: "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians, Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." Many Christians are Christ-like, but many seem to be about something else, usually self-righteousness. The Christians that seem to be trying to hijack the nation these days seem to be to be more of the self-righteous type.

This is great if you have land, water, time, are able-bodied, and there is not a drought.