NYMag: Bernie Sanders's BEZOS Bill Would Hurt the Working Class, Not the Rich

[joshcryer]

115. These people haven't spent a day of their life thinking about how the real world works.

You look at the text of the bill and it outlines several federal assistance programs which would be counted for the fees. Each assistance program therefore would be directly tied to the finances of a large corporation.

Now here's how SNAP works:

You go down to the local assistance office (usually the social security office but it can vary wildly by state or county), tell them how much you make, how much your bills are, and ask for assistance. The lady (usually it's a nice lady) will write up your paperwork, using a pen and piece of paper, and someone in the office will determine whether or not you are eligible.

The person at the federal level who signs off on disbursements does not know that lady, and will never ever see that piece of paper you filled out. That piece of paper will sit in a filing cabinet. It may be scanned, but it will not be sent up to the federal level. At the federal level they only see numbers.

At the federal level does SNAP know where you work? No. That piece of paper you filled out was just a piece of paper to tell the worker to press the button for your benefits, to say you're qualified. At the federal level they don't even know who you are. All digital tracking is done by each state itself, on websites administered by their own DHHS. And they themselves don't know where you work. Just that you qualified.

So how do you implement telling an employer how much SNAP their employee is getting? Go back to the nice lady taking your piece of paper where you wrote down the employer information. She puts it in to the system somehow and it gets shot up to the state level. How does the federal level get this information? They have to set up an entirely new system to track employers and employees on assistance. The federal level is ignorant of what is happening at the state and local level. They just send the funds. That's it.

So how would this be implemented in the real world?

You go to the employer and tell them you're on SNAP and tell them how much you make. Employers would have a separate piece of paper you have to fill out about your "assistance." It's a goddamn disgrace.