Trump Administration Wants People to Starve -Cleo Chaney

Original Article: https://www.npr.org/2019/04/01/707681965/more-than-750-000-could-lose-food-stamps-under-trump-administration-proposal

A new proposal under the Trump Administration has the potential to halt food stamps for over 750,000 individuals. This proposal would require that able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDS)  get jobs or participate in job training, working at least 20 hours a week, or they’d lose food stamps. The idea is to encourage people to find work instead of relying on government aid. However, food stamps are already dependent on people’s income; they’re reduced as income grows. So if unemployed ABAWDS don’t get jobs, they’ll lose all aid, and when they get jobs their aid will be reduced. It seems as if the guise of “reducing government dependence” is merely another way of saying “let’s reduce government aid altogether”, or alternately “we don’t care about poor people”, or alternatley, “let’s allow people to starve.”

I think it’s important to remember that someone completely dependent on food stamps is not living a comfortable life. If they could get a job that would provide for them better, they would. They aren’t lazy. A man interviewed in the article, Alton Royal, can’t find a job because of a bad leg and a criminal record. He would still be considered able bodied because there are many jobs he can do, but those jobs won’t hire him due to his record. He gets $185 a month from the government, which is not nearly enough to live comfortably. If he lost this money, he’d have no way to eat.

Conservatives in the later 20th century wanted to limit the welfare state, but Nixon, for example, was not that successful because surprisingly, people like not starving.