PA. to stop food stamps to anyone with more than $2,000 in assets (except house and some cars)

[JPZenger]

4. Good column in City Paper

http://www.citypaper.net/blogs/nakedcity/PA-declares-war-on-food-stamps.html

Excerpts:

" 'We all know that families need to save money to get off government assistance and achieve self-sufficiency,” according to a press release from Carey Morgan, Executive Director of the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger. “So it’s not only inhumane, but counterproductive to force people to drain their savings before they can get any help. Someone with less than $2,000 in the bank would easily be wiped out by one visit to the emergency room.”

There was a time not too long ago when even Republicans seemed to support the food stamp program.

How quickly things change — for the uglier and more racist. Newt Gingrich frequently calls Obama the “food stamp president” and Rick Santorum has declared, “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.” In April, House Budget Committee chair Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) proposed cutting $127 billion from the food stamp program. This is all motivated by a powerful idea: it is poor people's fault that they are poor, and they should be punished for it. And though the program is stigmatized as a handout to urban blacks, whites make up a far greater share of recipients."