GOP House: America Has Money For Agribusiness Subsidies, Not Food Stamps Marcos Da Silva12 July, 2013 This week, House Republicans turned the Farm Bill, a historically bipartisan piece of legislation that outlines subsidies to agribusiness, into a PR message. In a move that upset decades of political compromise on agriculture policy, House Republicans dropped funding for food stamps and other nutritional programs from the Farm Bill, which usually accounts for about 80 percent of the bill. It was a suicidal, Kamikaze-like stunt by the House Republicans, who had to have known that there was no way the Farm Bill they proposed would survive the Senate or a White House veto. Yet, decided to go ahead and pass the legislation in order to make a decisive pronouncement about their core identity and true beliefs. And who they are is a set of publicly elected representatives who just passed a revised farm bill chopping off billions in nutrition and food stamp programs for America’s poorest spread out over 10 years, in order to distribute about $195 billion towards agribusiness corporate welfare over the next 10 years. This comes at a time when the number of people using food stamps through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) increased by an average of 13 percent a year from 2008 to 2012. More than 47 million people in the United States rely on food stamps. That’s about 15 percent of the population, or one in seven Americans. Of those, 47 percent are children under 18, and 8 percent are seniors, according to the USDA. While Republicans are willing to shut down government in an attempt to prevent capital gains taxes from rising on the very wealthiest Americans, they will lay their lives down to defend off shore tax havens and other privileges for the 1% and fight tooth and nail against a higher minimum wage, affordable healthcare, and better financing education. And they’re also willing to steamroll over children and the elderly that make up the majority of food stamp recipients while they hand out subsidies to agribusiness, just to send a message. Their message is clear. The GOP simply does not have the interest of regular hardworking Americans in mind. The GOP pretends to have the same values as blue collar, hardworking Americans in the public eye, yet financially twists the knife with legislation behind the back of the very Americans it claims to represent.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Jul 2013 04:03:18 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015