Pennsylvania to impose asset test for food stamps

[Yo_Mama]

84. Sadly I know a family with net worth in the millions that applied and got them.

It's not that rare:
http://ulocal.wlwt.com/service/displayDiscussionThreads.kickAction?as=62688&w=223314&d=185671

Also when I was running through some of the health care bills (before ACA was finally passed), I realized there was a hole there.

I'm dying. I'm too young for SS, and I have enough assets to think applying for disability would be shameful at a time of such public need. But if I'm forced to buy insurance, I will qualify for Medicaid most years because my income is so low.

But someone like me should not be getting public assistance - I do have a lot of money saved and it should last out my lifetime, although I have very little cash most of the time, because I saw the financial crash coming and shifted into hard assets. Most days I am now not safe to drive, so I'm not working right now. There's nothing that I can reliably do - and my health care needs are very little, because there is almost no medical treatment that will benefit me. I really am not making this up, and I haven't solved my personal ethical issue, although there's a good chance I won't be around in 2014, so I'm not worrying over it that much.

But back to the point of the original post - food stamps are a necessity for many these days. But so is saving - setting an asset limit that low is just plain wrong. It forces poor families into penury, because without some savings they won't be able to do the basics, and their very insecure lives will become much more tragically insecure.

Food stamps should make the lives of families and poor people more secure, not less secure. We cannot structure our social benefit programs to torture the struggling people or to force them into such rotten choices.

A family of three would qualify for food stamps with about 2K in monthly income, so you are basically saying that they can't save more than a month's income saved? That's ridiculous. That means they have no security at all. This type of asset test converts poor working and responsible people into people who don't know whether they will have a roof over their heads in a month or two. It's outrageous. Anyone who has ever lived on very little knows that your car is not that reliable, and at any moment that might be an unexpected expense. If you have medical needs, then you have money set aside for medicines. How does such a family set money aside for heating expenses in cold areas, especially now that LIHEAP has been cut so much? What are they supposed to do - charge it on their non-existent credit cards?

This is outrageous and inhumane.