Cruelty is the point again
Remember André Bauer? He was the South Carolina lieutenant governor (Republican, naturally) who in 2010 compared government food assistance to the poor to feeding stray animals:
“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals,” Bauer said during a town hall meeting, as the Greenville News reported over the weekend. “You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.”
Bauer was saying the quiet part out loud before MAGA made it “conservative cool.” Cutting off poor people’s food is “a perennial Republican target,” observes Politicos’ Meredith Lee Hill.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy wants to use food assistance as leverage in his 2023 negotiations over raising the federal debt limit:
McCarthy’s initial list calls for expanding the age bracket for people who must meet work requirements in order to participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Food Assistance Program or SNAP, while closing what Republicans say are “loopholes” in existing restrictions, according to two people who were granted anonymity to discuss internal conversations.
Cutting spending on federal food assistance programs is a perennial Republican target, and House conservatives are eager to make it part of any agreement to raise the debt ceiling, which the country must do later this year to avoid a default crisis. But Senate Democrats have said such measures are dead on arrival in the upper chamber, and with the help of key Senate Republicans, they have killed off a series of similar House GOP efforts over the years — including a 2018 push involving McCarthy and his current top debt limit lieutenant Rep. Garret Graves (La.). The early response from Senate Republicans this time around does not bode well for a different outcome in 2023.
Bess Levin observed at Vanity Fair after Minnesota’s legislature approved free breakfast and lunch for all the state’s schoolchildren that 26 Republicans voted against the measure. State Sen. Steve Drazkowski opposed the bill, arguing he has “yet to meet a person in Minnesota who is hungry.”
“Hunger is a relative term,” Drazkowski added. “I had a cereal bar for breakfast. I guess I’m hungry now.”
Drazkowski, Bauer, and McCarthy? Cut from the same cloth?
Huffington Post reported last month on a Republican bill introduced by Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) to use hunger as leverage for cutting holes in other parts of the federal safety net:
The program already limits benefits for able-bodied adults without dependents who fail to work at least 20 hours per week, though there are a variety of exceptions and states often waive the requirement. Roughly 13% of households served by SNAP contained able-bodied childless adults under age 50, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Roughly a quarter of such households earned money from working.
Johnson’s proposal would reduce state discretion over eligibility rules and expand the definition of able-bodied adults without dependents to include people in their 50s and early 60s; the current cutoff is 49.
“Work is the best pathway out of poverty,” Johnson said in a press release. “With more than 11 million open jobs, there are plenty of opportunities for SNAP recipients to escape poverty and build a better life.”
I have a friend who did just that. SNAP benefits supported her family along the way.
Hunger is not just an urban problem, as Republicans from upstate New York know.
Politico cites a Wisconsin Republican more sympathetic to the poor. He’s been there:
Derrick Van Orden, a Trump-aligned Republican who represents a swing district in Wisconsin, spoke during the listening session of his family’s struggle with poverty and reliance on food stamps when he was a child. While he acknowledges some flaws in the current system, he said, “I’m a member of Congress because of these programs.”
“There’s a lot of people who have not gone to bed hungry at night, and I have. And there’s no place for that in America,” Van Orden said.
At least Republicans haven’t recommend shooting the poor or, as Jonathan Swift famously suggested, eating them.