House passes farm bill, eliminating Food Stamps

[Down the Gurney]

Oh no, let's not feed the poor children (47% of food stamp recipients are under 18).  Yet another reason why the GOP brand is so toxic.

Commieist!

Nice strawman. In fact, this bill barely touches the dole. It doesn't even touch the biggest dole of them all, Obamacare.

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

Why does the government hate its people?

[7,052,770]

If we get rid of the future costs of Obamacare, we'd be able to afford more food stamps and feed more people.

Are we still clinging to that?  How many years has been since the OMB showed that Obamacare is deficit-reducing?

[barfbag]

If we get rid of the future costs of Obamacare, we'd be able to afford more food stamps and feed more people.

Are we still clinging to that?  How many years has been since the OMB showed that Obamacare is deficit-reducing?

There's been a lot of studies. No one believes it's deficit reducing because OMB is wrong very often. I predict it to cost 14 trillion before we have to eliminate it due to a crisis caused from it.

[Ogre Mage]

Oh no, let's not feed the poor children (47% of food stamp recipients are under 18).  Yet another reason why the GOP brand is so toxic.

Commieist!

Nice strawman. In fact, this bill barely touches the dole. It doesn't even touch the biggest dole of them all, Obamacare.

You're bringing Obamacare into a discussion about food stamps are you're talking about strawmen?  Any fool can see that taking food stamps out of the agriculture bill is a prelude to House Republicans gutting the program.  Boehner says, "We'll get to that later."  LOL, yeah, right.

Subsidies to Big Agriculture are just so much more important to House Republicans than poor hungry people.  Never mind that error and fraud is considerably higher in the agricultural crop insurance program than in the food stamp program.  Do we really have to listen to another round of GOP sham talk about fiscal responsibility?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/18/us/politics/fraud-used-to-frame-farm-bill-debate.html

[Down the Gurney]

snip

You're bringing Obamacare into a discussion about food stamps are you're talking about strawmen?  Any fool can see that taking food stamps out of the agriculture bill is a prelude to House Republicans gutting the program.  Boehner says, "We'll get to that later."  LOL, yeah, right.

Subsidies to Big Agriculture are just so much more important to House Republicans than poor hungry people.  Never mind that error and fraud is considerably higher in the agricultural crop insurance program than in the food stamp program.  Do we really have to listen to another round of GOP sham talk about fiscal responsibility?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/18/us/politics/fraud-used-to-frame-farm-bill-debate.html

Yet Obamacare is the biggest dole of them all. It is taking 1/6 of the economy and turning it into a massive Goodwill sale. Not even archliberal LBJ imagined such a daring heist.

I agree that fraud in the agricultural subsidies is a major problem. It has only gotten worse under Obama, with your article stating, "Congress, however, has been reluctant to make changes in the $9 billion federal crop insurance program despite the fraud case in North Carolina and similar cases in recent years in California, Colorado and Ohio."

We should be killing all the cultures of corruption, notd just the ones that help people we like or hurt people we hate.

[krazen1211]

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2021413860_foodstampsxml.html

$526 on food spent on 3 people in 2 weeks. $12 per person per day.


These food stampers must be eating like kings.



Amazing how the taxpayer is expected to shell out $80 billion for a fatso who is, err, too, uncomfortable to cook.

[MasterJedi]

Actually eliminate food stamp, then create a program where the government provides everyone who would need them with large bags of rice and beans. Probably saves a ton and gives those using them actual healthy food.

[Brittain33]

Actually eliminate food stamp, then create a program where the government provides everyone who would need them with large bags of rice and beans. Probably saves a ton and gives those using them actual healthy food.

Replaces electronic distribution of money with manual distribution of goods. Infinitely more expensive.

[memphis]

Fact: the military is the biggest welfare program around.

[Torie]

Actually eliminate food stamp, then create a program where the government provides everyone who would need them with large bags of rice and beans. Probably saves a ton and gives those using them actual healthy food.

Replaces electronic distribution of money with manual distribution of goods. Infinitely more expensive.

Who knew? Of course that is right.

[Zioneer]

And yet again, a thread that proves that if you've got a blue avatar on the Atlas Forum, you're probably a bad person. Not 100% true in all cases (King is an exception to this rule), but a good rule of thumb.

[barfbag]

Fact: the military is the biggest welfare program around.

Please explain to us in depth detail how the military is a welfare program. What would we do without a military? They sacrifice their lives so we can cut their budget and then they get called a welfare program.

[barfbag]

And yet again, a thread that proves that if you've got a blue avatar on the Atlas Forum, you're probably a bad person. Not 100% true in all cases (King is an exception to this rule), but a good rule of thumb.

All you're saying is someone is a horrible person for disagreeing with you. Please stop the partisanship everyone.

[barfbag]

Business subsidies are the most corrupt and inefficient way of promoting a strong economy.

I agree especially when it comes to things like the auto bailout. It sounds like a lot of things were in the bill that shouldn't have been. Bills more than a few pages shouldn't be voted on. The best way to promote agriculture is to provide tax incentives for small farms. Prices of products would decline and food stamps would be less expensive for our nation or they'd buy more at the same amount.

[Torie]

And yet again, a thread that proves that if you've got a blue avatar on the Atlas Forum, you're probably a bad person. Not 100% true in all cases (King is an exception to this rule), but a good rule of thumb.

That is not a very nice comment. I am kind of disappointed actually. 

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

And yet again, a thread that proves that if you've got a blue avatar on the Atlas Forum, you're probably a bad person. Not 100% true in all cases (King is an exception to this rule), but a good rule of thumb.

A nice case study on the truth behind the leftist façade of toleration and acceptance of different people.

There is always an "except" coming down the pike somewhere in the effusion of support for such.

[Zioneer]

And yet again, a thread that proves that if you've got a blue avatar on the Atlas Forum, you're probably a bad person. Not 100% true in all cases (King is an exception to this rule), but a good rule of thumb.

That is not a very nice comment. I am kind of disappointed actually.  

Nah Torie, you're alright too. I'm talking about the other ones. I mean seriously, they're either being hacks about Obamacare (the Senate and Obama aren't going to give that up, deal with it), claiming that this doesn't gut food stamps (it does), or being awfully classist (krazen).

I mean, I'm not defending the red-avatar Democrats on this forum (opebo isn't funny and frankly annoying, for example), but the blue-avatars generally aggravate me more. This isn't a fun forum to be on anymore, because there's so many of them saying awful things.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Actually eliminate food stamp, then create a program where the government provides everyone who would need them with large bags of rice and beans. Probably saves a ton and gives those using them actual healthy food.

Replaces electronic distribution of money with manual distribution of goods. Infinitely more expensive.

Those electronic transfers are used to buy goods that already have the cost of manual distribution in their price - though I agree a government-run centrally distributed operation is likely to be highly inefficient and wasteful.

[Brittain33]

Those electronic transfers are used to buy goods that already have the cost of manual distribution in their price

True, true - and the value is that it's a system that already exists and functions efficiently to serve consumers, whether or not food stamps are added to the mix, as opposed to a second system.

Besides, I'm sure OP knows this, but giving a bag of rice and beans wouldn't serve the purpose of the SNAP program. The government wants people to have their choice of products which are primarily made of corn and wheat to help keep up demand for them...

[All Along The Watchtower]

The original post is lying. The bill doesn't eliminate food stamps.

It guts and takes the teeth out of the program.

No, it doesn't do that either. Someone is whining to prevent a 3% reduction to an extremely expensive program.

Lying is frowned upon, krazen.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

BTW, I fixed krazen's broken link in the quote below:

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2021413860_foodstampsxml.html

$526 on food spent on 3 people in 2 weeks. $12 per person per day.


These food stampers must be eating like kings.

Somehow, I doubt that all the food they eat is consumed on the last day that food is purchased.  If like most people, they make weekly shopping trips, then that $526 dollars is lasting three weeks, not two.

But even $12 a day is not eating like a king.  If you think that is the case, you must not be the one who does the grocery shopping in your household.  At $8/day (over three weeks if one takes a reasonable inference from the story of how long she makes the benefit last instead of your hyperbolic one) or $6/day (over four weeks, which the person in the article says she could do if she didn't include items like fresh veggies in her family's diet) the resulting diet is even less kingly.  As noted in the article, she doesn't have full access to a kitchen of her own, so even if she had the time, cooking every meal from scratch isn't an option.

I have the space to buy food on sale for later use and the time and facilities to cook it myself and yet despite living in area that has a lower cost of living than both Tacoma and where you live krazen, I doubt I could fix myself a healthy diet on $6/day.  I could make it stretch if I dumped things like fruit and veggies from my diet and subsisted on 88¢ Banquet frozen dinners every supper. (As an occasional small meal, they're acceptable, but I shudder to think about anyone forced to eat one of them or the equivalent every day.  The sodium alone would likely kill them and if not that, then the fat would.) [Note: 88¢ is the sale price on them.  Usually they're in the $1 to $1.25 range depending on the store.]

[barfbag]

Business subsidies are the most corrupt and inefficient way of promoting a strong economy.

I think subsidies and tax incentives for small farmers would help our country as long as we don't over subsidize.

[Vosem]

Hasn't it been rather conclusively shown that by stimulating spending food stamps ultimately make money for the government -- that is to say, more tax revenue as a result of food stamps comes in than is spent on food stamps? Or am I confusing this with something else?

[barfbag]

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2021413860_foodstampsxml.html

$526 on food spent on 3 people in 2 weeks. $12 per person per day.


These food stampers must be eating like kings.



Amazing how the taxpayer is expected to shell out $80 billion for a fatso who is, err, too, uncomfortable to cook.

I wouldn't call it eating like kings. $12 a day will keep you from starving, but it's not going to buy a feast for every meal. People can be very bad with their money, but my point is $12 a day for food isn't eating like a king.