By Charles Pierce, Esquire
In a truly sane and civil democracy, the fact that the alleged party of the people spent almost a flat year arguing over precisely how miserable it could make the lives of the destitute without surrendering any political advantage would be cause for extraordinary outrage and (maybe) even some electoral consequences down the line.
“I don’t need a whole lot to eat,” said Leon Simmons, 63, who spends more than half of his monthly $832 Social Security income to rent a room in an East Charleston house. “But this month I know I’m not going to buy any meats.” Mr. Simmons’s allotment from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly called food stamps, has dropped $9. He has already spent the $33 he received for November. The reduction in benefits has affected more than 47 million people like Mr. Simmons. It is the largest wholesale cut in the program since Congress passed the first Food Stamps Act in 1964 and touches about one in every seven Americans.
I ask this in all seriousness — when was the last time the president gave a speech about poverty? Not a section in the State of the Union. Not a speech about the embattled middle class. Not about how we all do better when all of us are doing better. Not about increasing opportunity. A full-throated, unequivocal speech simply about poverty, and about poor people, and about how it is a moral disgrace in the richest nation on earth to have as many people as we do who are forced to choose between meat and shelter. Let him give one now. I’ll buy a ticket.
In the 2010 fiscal year, 40.3 million people were enrolled. Two years later, that number jumped by 16 percent. Just over 45 percent of those getting food stamps are children, according to the Agriculture Department. Food stamps are likely to be cut more in the coming years if Congress can agree on a new farm bill, which House and Senate negotiators began tackling this week. The Republican-controlled House has approved cutting as much as $40 billion from the program by making it harder to qualify. The Democratic-controlled Senate is suggesting a $4 billion cut by making administrative changes. To poor families trying to stretch a couple hundred dollars into a month’s worth of groceries, all the talk about stimulus packages, farm subsidies and congressional politics means little. It is all about daily survival at the grocery store. “We’ll be on our last $3 at the end of the month,” said Rafaela Rivera, 34, a home health aide who earns $10 an hour.
It’s not entirely the president’s fault, and it’s not like Willard Romney cares fk-all about the issue, either. Poverty — the grinding, abject poverty we’re talking about here — is the great unmentionable in our national debates. It’s about a political class — and a courtier press — so insulated from the consequences of their actions that Rafaela Rivera — who, as a home health aide, likely does more good in a day than Paul Ryan has done in his entire sorry-ass public career — might as well live on Saturn. And, of course, nobody in Washington need worry about the ripple effects, either.
At a Food Lion in Charleston where as many as 75 percent of the shoppers use food stamps, managers were bracing for lower receipts as the month wore on. At a Met Foodmarket in the Bronx, where 80 percent of the 7,000 weekly customers use food stamps, overall food sales have already dropped by as much as 10 percent.” I wasn’t expecting it to be that fast,” said Abraham Gomez, the manager. Losing that much revenue could mean cutting back hours for employees, he said.
This is how a Democratic president once spoke about poverty.
What does this poverty mean to those who endure it? It means a daily struggle to secure the necessities for ever a meager existence. It means that the abundance, the comforts, the opportunities they see all around them are beyond their grasp. Worst of all, it means hopelessness for the young.The young man or woman who grows up without a decent education, in a broken home, in a hostile and squalid environment, in ill health or in the face of racial injustice–that young man or woman is often trapped in a life of poverty.He does not have the skills demanded by a complex society. He does not know how to acquire those skills. He faces a mounting sense of despair which drains initiative and ambition and energy…[W]e must also strike down all the barriers which keep many from using those exits. The war on poverty is not a struggle simply to support people, to make them dependent on the generosity of others. It is a struggle to give people a chance. It is an effort to allow them to develop and use their capacities, as we have been allowed to develop and use ours, so that they can share, as others share, in the promise of this nation. We do this, first of all, because it is right that we should.
Christmas past.
