Showing 10 comments for
Government Assistance Comes With Strings

I never understood why SNAP cannot be used for soap and toilet paper, just as I never understood why SNAP can be used for party foods.

Its more of the Democratic entitlement programs to keep them all dependent on the government's largess. That way they'll keep voting for the Democratic Socialist Party. What they don't realize is the ultimate cost they'll end up paying - THE GOVERNMENT DOESN'T GIVE ANYTHING AWAY FOR FREE."The Government that is big enough to give you everything, is big enough to take it all away." - Thomas Jefferson

Stop issuing any type of card or check and open more facilities that provide meals, if they are really hungry they will show up to eat a more balanced meal.Offer the people collecting food stamps an opportunity to learn to prepare meals at one of these facilities.If they are unable to make wise food choices on their own then stop enabling them to do so. If they need to eat then prepare food for them. If they are overweight then a walk to where there is subsistence food solves two problems at once.

I couldn't agree more with Linda.I'd go even further and require welfare recipients to take drug tests to get a monthly check. Sure, the left would cry "racism", but the majority of welfare recipients are white.I've said to my wife many times, who's a high school teacher, that I don't like my tax dollars spent on junk food at the school cafeterias. I don't like gov't control, but if I'm paying for it, then serve only healthy meals. If they don't like it, they can bring their own.The difference relating to the healthcare debate, controling our medical lives, is that we have no choice but to join gov't healthcare when it comes around (it will). No one makes you take a welfare check or state debit card.

The following two comments sum up, quite succinctly what ails our republic. Finding viable solutions for them should be the priority in the next election. "a friend send (sic) me a definition of "ineptocracy," a made-up word that is deftly defined as "a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society the least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers." It would be a challenge to do a neater job of summing up the Obama administration in 50 words or less. (Prelutsky, 2012, para 9)"Pasted from "Regarding the current state of the nation, nothing I've come across lately sums it up so well as a message I came across from an anonymous source: "The problems we face today exist because the people who work for a living are out-numbered by the people who vote for a living." (Prelutsky, 2012, para 5)"Pasted from

I can simplify the whole thing for everyone-on the dole-lose the ability to vote.How fast would all the welfare go away then??

Can anyone tell me which section of the Constitution authorizes food stamps. Some guy by the name of James Madison said charity is not in the constitution.

All aid is counterproductive. Whatever aid government gives must be borrowed on the taxpayers’ credit cards. Then, it always has strings attached and once it is implanted (e.g. food stamps) it never ends. What the politicians do is take our money and buy our liberty with it because if anyone disobeys the orders of the bureaucrat his “aid” will be cut off.I know that Ms. Chavez was a Bush bureaucrat but we must remember that the only difference between a progressive politician and a "conservative" like Bush is a matter of degree. When USDA wedged its way into school lunchrooms with "aid," it was only a matter of time before it looked into childrens lunch sacks.

"Liberals screamed discrimination against the poor"One would think they'd be overjoyed. Aren't a majority of the food police on the left side of the isle? One would think that Michell-O, would be seizing the initiative in this bill, and claiming it was somehow her idea.

I agree with the idea of restricting what items may be bought with "food stamps", but for very different reasons. Dictating which foods are "healthy" and which are not is indeed a VERY slippery slope--one on which the government should never set foot. HOWEVER, both the high monthly amount of food stamps given to families and the lack of limits on what may be bought with the food stamps have served to make the poor "easy in their poverty".A few things that I have observed with my own eyes:1)A family recieving food stamps will not be forced to shop wisely in order to stretch the grocery budget. A member of my family who recieves food stamps for her family doesn't think twice about loading her cart with more expensive "convenience foods". Please understand-- I am not talking about a deadbeat!! This person is a wonderful mom and normally very frugal; she can flat out squeeze water from a turnip when buying items not covered by food stamps. She is grateful for the help, but she simply has no real reason to limit her grocery spending.2)It's true that "food stamps" are not acutal paper "stamps" anymore. But the groceries bought with them may still be TRADED FOR DRUGS, because, at least in the grocery aisle, food stamps are as good as cash!! You can buy frozen pizza, steaks, Little Debbie cakes... whatever you--or your drug dealers--want.The purpose of the food stamp program is to prevent malnutrition. If all that food stamps bought were, say, industrial sized cans of beans and bags of rice, people would be encouraged to GET THEMSELVES OFF of food stamps, and drug dealers wouldn't accept food stamp-bought groceries for payment!