Tea Partying congressman Andy Harris (R), who represents Maryland’s first congressional district, gave an interview to CNN yesterday in advance of the House’s vote to reduce food stamp, or SNAP, spending by $39 billion. Using typical Republican faulty logic, Harris explained to CNN anchor Carol Costello that by eliminating fraud in the program “That ought to leave more money getting to the hands of the people who do need it.” He highlights a story about a store owner in Baltimore who supposedly committed over $2 million worth of food stamp fraud to make his point that money could be taken out of the program because: "It’s a 5 percent decrease, when we know that there is 10.5 percent of the stores that take food stamps are engaged in trafficking. So we know the fraud stands at 10 percent of the stores. We only want to cut 5 percent." Harris doesn’t realize or won’t admit that unless something is done to directly address fraud, reducing the amount of funding for the SNAP program will not reduce the percentage of fraud one bit. What it will do is take SNAP Benefits away from many people who desperately need them. Costello observes: "But if you change the requirement, some people will be eliminated from qualifying for food stamps. There are critics who say that those people need them too. And how do you decide who needs food stamps and who doesn’t?" In typical Republican fashion, Harris responds with the same talking point: "Well, again, there’s the one study that showed — by the Dept. of Agriculture — 10.5 percent of stores are committing fraud." Harris is almost certainly aware that the Department of Agriculture has been fighting fraud in the SNAP program, and has been dealing with it through arrests and by disqualifying some retailers from participating. A USDA press release from last February announced new steps the department was taking to combat fraud, and also that 1,387 stores were permanently barred from the SNAP program because of food stamp trafficking in 2012. After revisiting the comment about the amount of fraud in the program, Harris brings in the other talking point Republicans love when discussing “safety net” benefits: work: "And, you know what we’re doing, is we’re just saying, ‘Look, if we’re going to help you with food stamps — and we are — then we need you to either work, look for employment — if you’re able bodied, not disabled and able to work — either look for work or engage in job training.’ We think that’s a common-sense trade-off for getting help from the American taxpayer that needy people need." Republicans love to push out their chests and talk in noble terms about the “value of work.” Costello responds Well, some might say it’s easy to say, ‘Get some job training, get a new job, get a better paying job.’ But there aren’t that many jobs available at this particular time in our economy to accomplish that. A Congressional Budget Office estimate from September 16 says that under the House passed bill, SNAP participation would decline from 48 million people in an average month in 2013, to 34 million in 2023. Harris, who is an anesthesiologist, must have accidentally gotten a few whiffs of his anesthetic gasses. Not only is he ignorant of how the SNAP program cuts will hurt families nationwide, he apparently either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about the demographics of his own district in regard to SNAP. The USDA provides the following data regarding SNAP recipients for Harris’s own congressional district: 25.7 percent of SNAP households have one or more members 60 years old or older 61.8 percent of SNAP households have children under the age of 18 57.3 percent are white 49.5 percent had one worker during the past 12 months. 33.7 percent had two or more workers during that time period So Harris’s vote to reduce SNAP spending doesn’t just hurt some nameless, faceless people somewhere else, it will directly affect his own constituents. Yet this conservative area in eastern Maryland will likely continue to elect this heartless “one percenter” again, and again. (Note: Harris is also the congressman who famously demanded to know, after being elected in 2010, why he had to wait a month for his health care benefits to begin. So he’s not against all federal benefits-just those that do not benefit him.)
Posted on: Sun, 22 Sep 2013 14:29:03 +0000
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