This is really important. Please call your congressman today and tell them they need to restore food stamps:
MSNBC host Chris Hayes couldn’t contain his exasperation on Wednesday in discussing the implications for poor Americans if $5 billion is cut from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) on Friday.
“Fifteen percent of Americans are poor,” Hayes told Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) and his other panelists. “Forty-seven million people. I look at that and I say, this is not working. What we are doing right now — our system, the system we’re running, is failing. Forty seven million people hungry, in poverty, in this country is a failing rate. American capitalism is not producing, at this moment, broad gains for people. It is not.”
McGovern, a member of the House Agriculture Committee, also called for President Barack Obama’s administration to join a broader discussion about not only conserving SNAP benefits, but the overall effects of poverty on the country.
“We need to be talking about increasing the minimum wage,” McGovern proposed. “We need to be talking about how you extend ladders of opportunity to help people get out of poverty. But in the meantime, we need to make sure that we are there with a safety net to make sure that people have at least enough to eat. What a radical idea, that everybody in this country — the richest country in the history of the world — ought to have enough to eat.”
Taking $5 billion out of the SNAP program, New York Coalition Against Hunger executive director Joel Berg told Hayes, would have the same effect as shutting down all of the country’s food charities for a year, a loss that food banks would not be able to cover, a topic that, as Media Matters reported on Tuesday, has gone largely ignored in media circles.
“Until this segment, as far as we know, this is the first network news show to even discuss 48 million people losing food,” Berg said. Technically, however, Hayes’ colleague Al Sharpton,addressed the issue on Tuesday.
According to the Republicans and their Libertarian and T-bag supporters these poor, hungry people have no one to blame for their situation but themselves. These lazy, layabouts want the government to take care of them. The Right refuses to do that. The solution that the Right offers is that these bums should all go out and get a job. Some on the Right even quote Bible verses that indicate that Jesus agreed with the Republican’s argument. What a sorry state our country is in thanks to the Republicans and their friends.
I urge everyone who has a few dollars to spare to send some to your local food bank now. They always have a need but especially here right before winter and the holidays – it couldn’t be a better time to donate to that cause.
And yes – call and email your congresscritter.