That’s how a representative democracy works.
The people of Kansas hired them, and the representatives and Governor are answerable to them every two/four/six years at reelection time.
Nonsense.
Surely, you can tell the difference between teachers and SNAP recipients in terms of how they came by said money?
No, actually, I think there’s a lot to this. Kansas, after all, is the state that proposed redesigning the EBT benefits card to make it bright red so it would stand out. (The feds apparently nixed that idea.) Nothing like making sure everybody in the checkout line knows who’s using food stamps, right?
Kansas also eliminated the refundable food sales tax rebate for low-income residents, among other changes that have shifted the tax burden down the income ladder; one of the people shaping Brownback’s reshaping of welfare touted that women ought to marry their way out of poverty (they had to marry an opposite-sex partner, though, because polygamy was more compatible with “core values” than same-sex marriage).
It’s not that hard to find rhetoric in Kansas politics that equates the two. For example,the speaker of the Kansas House just a few months ago said, “Government employees produce nothing.” (He later “clarified” his remarks–oh, he didn’t really mean that.)
Do we have any evidence that discussion of the bill even involved quantification of actual misuse of funds? A cost benefit analysis of the ATM limit? I didn’t see anything, but I’m not familiar with the layout of kslegislature.org .
It sure looks like a fuck the poors bill, and I say that as someone with “it’s not really their money” sympathies.
To a point. The way it works is that once they’re in, the reps are free to pursue their own agendas, knowing full well the voters aren’t going to fire them over one issue they disagree with, if indeed they disagreed. The state of Kansas has enough right wingers that the legislature can pretty much do whatever ALEC tells them to with no fear of being drummed out of office. But the question remains, is it right for the legislature to draft laws for the purpose of harassing the poor because they don’t like them and want to make their lives miserable? I say no, and I dare say you disagree.
I don’t have a “problem” with it so much as it is wrong. If someone gives them money with restrictions on how they can spend it, then they need to abide by the restrictions. If that counts as not being “their” money, then it is not their money.
If they don’t like the restrictions, then they don’t have to accept the money.
Regards,
Shodan
There is a difference between reasonable restrictions on how to spend their money (like a perfectly reasonable ban on use of the card at casinos) and petty vindictive nickel and diming of the poor on ATM fees. Since the poor often live in a cash economy, limiting their access to their money to $25 increments is unreasonable harassment. There are only two reasons for this: wanting to make poor people miserable and giving a nice little gift to the bank in exchange for campaign contributions.
The spirit of Der Trihs lives on.
Regards,
Shodan
I can’t speak for him, but I suspect he would say much the same. You can put a fig leaf on it and make it appear decent, but the intent is just to be mean.
If the choice is “accept this money or starve” or “accept this money or sleep on a sewer grate to keep warm” then it’s not actually a choice, it’s coercion.
Lots of people live on the long edges of the state. They will lose roughly half their brick and mortar retail choices, due to being forbidden to make “purchases at points of sale outside the state of Kansas.” Often those out of state locations were cheaper. This means having to pay more, which takes more than pennies.
What about on-line purchases? Taking away the many low priced and used merchandise deals on the web will cost recipient mucho pennies. A defense attorney could argue that the point of sale is the computer location the order was made from. But I somehow doubt this will be a winner before an elected Kansas judge.
(By the way, this doesn’t imply people on TANF can commonly afford computer and internet service. They could use a computer at a friendly neighbor’s house, or in a public library.)
Who determines what is a reasonable restriction? I submit it’s not you.
And I submit it’s not legislators whose primary goal is to score political points by being tough on the poor. (Kansas has a massive budget deficit. Being able to deflect attention [“it’s all those scammers on welfare”] takes the heat off legislators.)
Nobody is forcing anybody to do anything.
Use the money from your job to pay the rent and your card to pay for food.
Why would you buy candy bars instead of regular food?
I don’t think I can explain it to you if you’re buying candybars. I can tell you what I did without ever taking welfare when I was 19. I bought a used mobile home and spent less than half of what a comparable square foot apartment would have cost to live. If I was truly desperate I could have rented out a room and lived in it for almost nothing.
$7.85/hr times 20 hrs week times 4 weeks covers your rent. Or you can do what people I worked with did at that wage and live in a charity hotel until you got your feet back on the ground.
There’s a reason states don’t hand out cash. This change in the law makes it harder to abuse.
So who makes the determination, then? Surely it’s not “message board posters.”
Have you somehow gotten the impression that a firm and unequivocal statement of the bleeding obvious is the same as an argument?
If a beneficiary wants to use their benefit money to pay the bills they actually have, the money to which the government has already decided they are entitled, they have to pay fees. How is that not “forced”?
And if I don’t have a job? Looking for a job, vocational training, working on my GED, and volunteering for VISTA all fulfill the work requirements without generating a paycheck. Also, the adults in the household may have medical issues, be awaiting a disability determination, or be a full-time caretaker to a disabled family member, and they don’t have “money from your job” either.
Further, close to 40% of TANF cases are “child-only”; there is no adult in the household participating in the program. This includes teen parents out on their own, children in various kinds of foster care, children whose parents are not eligible for various reasons (drugs, immigration status, time limits, etc.), and children whose parent(s) receive SSI for a disability. In these situations, there may or may not be anybody drawing a paycheck that would pay the rent, and/or they’d rather use their food stamps to buy food and TANF to pay other bills.
Because you’re needing to buy something quick and cheap, quite possibly in a convenience store, dollar store, or other venue where regular food isn’t necessarily available?
Stores in poor neighborhoods quite frequently have limits on the POS systems; you can use them only once or twice a day, and only for a certain amount (e.g., $10 or $20) over the amount of purchase. If you’re needing to withdraw a couple of hundred via POS to pay the rent, that means making lots of small purchases at lots of stores. They’re not all going to be grocery stores.
$7.85/hr x 20 hrs x 4 weeks - SocSec/Medicare tax = $580. In a pretty good swath of the United States, that is not going to cover rent + utilities, never mind details like laundry and shampoo, or transportation to get to the job.
Further, TANF stands for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Note that last word. With few exceptions, you’re not eligible for TANF unless there’s a kid involved. Kids have extra expenses, and the kinds of living arrangements you can get away with as a single adult don’t always work so well when there’s a little one underfoot. While the situation is getting better, for example, many homeless shelters, charity hotels, and the like simply don’t accept or can’t accommodate toddlers.
It’s a cash assistance program. This change in the law makes it harder to pay necessary bills.
Ideally, the determination would be de-politicized. Since we don’t live in an ideal world, the next best choice to make sure politicians CAN’T score cheap points by bashing the vulnerable. That does mean open public discussion, including on message boards.
No, it’s not an argument.
It’s an assertion without evidence, which can be dismissed without evidence.
So here’s a question that just occurred to me: For those who are in favor of item limits on food stamps or limiting cash access…does your concern about detailed use of public funds extend to PELL grants and federally subsidized student loans?
Should we allow students to use PELL grants and Fed loans at expensive brand name private schools? Why? Shouldn’t they be spending our money more wisely at state schools or community colleges? What about degree choice? Why should taxpayer dollars support someone’s desire to get a degree in Art History, when there are so few jobs in Art History? Should we limit grant and federal loan money to Nursing and other degrees that are more likely to lead directly to employment in their field upon graduation? Or maybe we’re doing it all wrong and these things shouldn’t pay for degrees at all, but only vocational training, since there are so many people working jobs unrelated to their degree, that was just a waste of money.
Should we stop sending students the balance of their funds in a check if there’s money left over after paying tuition? Or make them take it out in $25 increments? Right now we’re just trusting that they’re using the funds for education related expenses, but they could be buying lobster and tarot readings with that money.