Who’s dependent on food stamps? Cheapskate corporations

[Sherman A1]

The House of Representatives passed a farm bill on July 11 that, for the first time in 40 years, excludes authorization for food stamps. Although this omission doesn’t eliminate spending on what’s known formally as the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), which can still receive congressional appropriations, it will likely result in substantial cuts. That’s because SNAP’s expansion has become a source of growing complaint among Republicans—most famously during the 2012 Republican primaries, when Newt Gingrich labeled Barack Obama “the food stamp president.”

The GOP’s objection to food stamps is that they create welfare dependency among recipients (even though they can’t be used for anything except food). As Rep. Paul Ryan put it in his 2013 budget document, “State governments have little incentive to make sure that able-bodied adults on SNAP are working, looking for work, or enrolled in job training programs.”

But this gets the problem exactly backwards. A majority of food-stamp families with an able-bodied adult do work, and more than 60% of such families work when they have children. They just don’t get paid enough to feed their families. SNAP is therefore principally a program to subsidize cheapskate employers like Walmart that don’t give employees enough salary to live on. It’s actually been called “the Walmart Syndrome.”

The main reason SNAP has been expanding lately is, of course, the Great Recession. Robert Rector and Katherine Bradley of the Heritage Foundation, observing that spending on food stamps has increased from $20 billion in 2000 to $85 billion in 2011, have proposed lowering SNAP’s budget to pre-recession levels.

http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/07/12/walmart-whos-dependent-on-food-stamps-cheapskate-corporations/

[love_katz]

1. Great OP headline.

Yep...we need to save those profits for the massahs. Can't be askin' them folks to take a cut in profits so the workers can live with dignity...why, that might mean the massahs might need to sell off one of their mansions, or something.

[muntrv]

2. Ah the Walmart Syndrome!

If you work for Wally World, you need food stamps.

[prairierose]

3. As a taxpayer, I am getting very tired of ....

subsidizing the evil walmart and other corps that not only do not pay their taxes, they do not pay a living wage. But here is what is even more stupid.

Walmart has all of their little lobbyists running around Congress and every state legislature to avoid taxes and spread the propaganda about the evils of welfare and food stamps. Yet, in most towns where there is an evil walmart, they are often the only grocery left standing (after destroying the competition) or they have people convinced they actually have the "low prices" (trademarked lie of walmart). So where are their employees going to spend their food stamps....at the evil walmart of course; along with all of the other brainwashed people who believe the lies about prices. So by lobbying against food stamps, they are cutting into their own business.

Bloody brilliant.......

[YoungDemCA]

4. Those corporate hogs that live off the dole....

...sure could use a helping of "Self-reliance" and "personal responsibility", eh?

[KamaAina]

5. Another large employer with many employees on SNAP

the U.S. military.

[Scurrilous]

6. K & R

[DirkGently]

7. Exactly. n/t

[reformist2]

8. On the flip side are the corporations that benefit from food stamps.... Coca Cola, Frito Lay, etc.

When you realize just how many corporations have a vested interest in keeping SNAP going, you realize that is one program that's not going anywhere.

[Sherman A1]

9. Precisely

I suspect this House Bill will not survive it's trip to the Senate, but you have to wonder the one sided reasoning of the GOP Congressmen.

[HiPointDem]

10. kr