Trump wants to replace food stamps with a box of processed food, everyone gets the same thing

The BBQ Pit
1

Link: here

“The proposal, buried in the White House’s fiscal 2019 budget, would replace about half of the money most families receive via the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, with what the Department of Agriculture is calling “America’s Harvest Box.” That package would…include items like shelf-stable milk, peanut butter, pasta, canned fruits and meats, and cereal.”

I really thought I was reading something from the Onion, but no. This is real.

This is so fucked up on so many levels. What are people, especially kids, supposed to do with this if they are lactose intolerant, allergic to gluten or peanuts, or diabetic and should not be eating processed carbs like pasta and cereal?

How on earth would this even be distributed? Just dropped on people’s porches to get rained on or stolen? Or do people have to line up somewhere to get it? What if they don’t have a car? What if the box is too heavy to take on the bus or carry home?

What about folks who don’t have a working stove, or are homeless? How are they supposed to cook that pasta?

Is the GOP really this hateful towards the poor that they would implement such a draconian change to the lives of people who need help putting nutritious food on the table?

I’m all for limiting food stamp spending to only healthful, nutritious foods and have no problem with prohibiting the purchase of junk foods like soda, chips and candy. But this…taking half of their grocery money away and replacing it with a generic, bland box of highly processed food is just appalling to me.

2

It is your fault for being poor. Therefore, we need to shame you into not being poor.

That’s the GOP/conservative idea behind this. It is what they are all about - humiliating people for “losing”.

3

This kinda paternalistic nonsense is why I’m in favor of replacing federal welfare programs with a large expansion of EITC. (Call it universal income or negative income tax or whatever if you please.) The amount saved over administering these asinine and complex programs would make up for the expense of just letting poor people manage their own damn lives with a little bit of help.

4

Yes. Plus a lot of them are probably illegals anyway. Good Americans have their own food money earned with the sweat of immigrant labor.

5

There’s already a thread here.

6

To quote a Townhall (Republican website) contributor: “All these problems that you list would be solved if you just made your own money and supported yourself”: x.com

7

Thanks, I looked before posting but didn’t see that one. Apologies.

8

We have so many new omnibus threads that there will probably not be a need to start a new thread here ever again. It will always be “there’s an omnibus thread for that”!

9

It would be better to post in that thread to let people know there is a more useful and specific thread here. Omnibus threads suck.

10

Those kids should have picked non-lazy parents to be borne to.

Yes.

11

As with anything Trump, the basis behind it is who’s going to profit. Does he owe one to big agriculture? Food manufacturers? I love the “Made in the USA” part. Most of our canned fruit is from Asia.

The message has been that sick, poor, and old people are a threat to the bottom line. They must go but not in an obvious way. Starve them either literally or from lack of health care. There aren’t words strong enough for how evil this all is.

12

Never mind gluten/nut allergies and lactose intolerance, what if you just don’t like fucking peanut butter? Who are they to tell people what they have to eat? The poor neighborhoods will devolve into Mad Max style hellscapes where raiders trade jars of peanut butter for bags of Doritos on the down low.

13

Yeah, FFS Trump should just cut through all the crap and build Trump branded camps to put all the undesirables in and start up the gas chambers. What’s with all this dancing around the edges?

(God, I hope he doesn’t read this - he’ll offer me a job!)

14

Two threads on the subject and someone has yet to mention Soylent Green.

It’s made of Illegal Immigrant People!!

15

Says the guy who made an omnibus snark thread. :wink:

16

Please. That’s Soylent Brown.

This is going to be a pretty big change, and a smart person would do a pilot program first to see how it works and get the bugs out before it goes national. How much you wanna bet Trump doesn’t do that? But then, this is just a proposal and probably won’t get through Congress.

17

How much of his “skinny budget” proposal from last year got actually put in?

18

Au contraire. I made an *ongoing *snark thread. That choice of words, or at least the lack of “omnibus” was very deliberate.

19

on that list i might be able to eat the Peanut butter if its actual pb (ingredients: peanuts, salt) and not the usual shit, and I might be able to eat the canned meats if they are in fact canned meats and not some soy variant.

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Just wait till you try the Trump branded canned Emu left over from a failed venture in Ukraine. That definitely isn’t soy you’re tasting.