This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation. The House of Representatives has passed a bill that would cut spending, in part by expanding work requirements for the…
The “work requirements” pushed by the Republican Party do not function as they claim, but Republicans already know that, they are not that stupid. But it does highlight the complete and absolute hypocrisy of the Republican position. They claim to be a party of god, but enact policies that hurt people - even their own base. The leadership has learned over the decades how to lie and distort reality in a convincing way to sell to their base the belief that “others are getting things they are not”, where others is code for non-white people. Consequently, they have found how to have their base vote against their own best interests. Politics at its worst. Why should anyone any longer think otherwise? The goal appears simply not to get people to work for a benefit. It is to punish them and put up additional barriers.
Just look at their policies and their speaking mouths (FOX, etc.). Can anyone honestly give one recent example (recent being in the past 40 years) where Republicans have actually done something for the betterment of all people in the Nation? They just want to split people into warring camps - the divide and conquer approach, and it is working. Demographics are working against them, and they know it, so they will go down fighting (and hurting others). That is how the far Right got started in a serious way. They have always been there, but they knew they needed to keep quiet as other moderate Republicans made sure they didn’t disrupt their efforts. Now, that has failed as there are no longer such things as moderate Republicans. They allowed Trump and the Republican radical right to lead.
Just add SNAP work requirements to their long and lengthy list of national policy failures.
The short version of the conclusion to draw here is that the GOP doesn’t want poor, hungry people to work so much as they want them to starve. The cruelty is the point.
A job is a special subset of work that puts money into someone else’s wallet. Rightists are merely the someone else, into whose wallets they want SNAP recipients’ work to put money.
This is why they are so anxious for everyone or other to get a job, and also why the tons of work people do every day, which is not a job because it doesn’t put money in a rightist’s wallet, doesn’t count in the rightists’ book.
The rightist’s lament that nobody wants to work, really means nobody wants the crappy jobs they have on offer.
Good diet is critical to longevity and health. Even SNAP does not guarantee a healthy diet, it is merely aspirational. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans codify the current nutritional direction consumers are expected to follow. If you go to the store, or different stores, you will see from the shopping carts that nutritional approaches are all over the map. The more wealthy and better-educated you are, the more nutritionally aware you are – generally speaking. “Precision nutrition”, optimized diet for the person, is the current goal. Indeed, making it harder to get food that is not good for you might be a benefit. Right now SNAP disallows hot foods and some impulse items at point of sale. Most snack foods, including pop-tarts and fritos, are covered.
SNAP Work Requirements Don’t Actually Get More People Working. They Just Make It Harder For People To Get Food.
What “conservatives” might call a win - win.
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One wonders if the Repubs ever calculate the cost of monitoring adherence to their draconian rules? It takes people and systems to guarantee compliance. How much does that ongoing effort cost? Cost/benefit? I thought the Repubs hated the “administrative state?” I will echo the sentiments of others that the cruelty is the point. So much for their hollow “pro-life” claims.
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So if Republican are all about the federal government monitoring its welfare output so it doesn’t make people dependent, and instituting a work requirement as a means to help them make changes so they are no longer taking this welfare…
Then why do we not apply this logic to red welfare states?
Sorry Mississippi, no funds for you if you are just going to piss it away…
My wife works at a charity that has a food pantry. Although there are a few cheaters most of the beneficiaries are people that cannot work either for family reason or just for the fact that they have learning disabilities, personality problems or outright health issues, that they simply cannot hold to a job. It is not a matter of sloth. And they have to be very careful with the requirements because the cheaters get around them but legitimate people in need might get cut off.
What you mean they used the money to build a Volleyball Arena for Brett Favre’s daughter college.
Fuck the poor - am I right?
/s
By comparing older and younger adults previously getting SNAP benefits, we found that work requirements did not increase employment or earnings 18 months after their reinstatement.
But we did find that work requirements dramatically reduced the number of people enrolled in SNAP. Among the adults subject to work requirements once they were restored in 2013, over half lost their benefits because of the policy.
To Republicans, this is a feature, not a bug.
From our friends at The Onion –
“The people who mow our lawns, wash our dishes, and bathe our aging parents need to learn the value of a day’s work.”
“If you could get free soup without working, 97% of Americans would quit their jobs tomorrow.”
“What if they get addicted to the food?”
And depending on the state, not only do people have to get together all the stuff to prove they meet the work requirements before they sign up, they have to keep doing it, because something might have changed.
So it will work as intended.
SNAP Work Requirements Don’t Actually Get More People Working
Republicans believe people don’t want to work. That’s why Republican entrepreneurs pay so little.
Why waste giving money on someone who prefers being lower class?
GOTCHA: Everyone is lower class to them
From the Department of Duh.
That isn’t intended as a disparagement on the TPM article, but rather a jab at the dumb-ass (and baseless) premise of Fright-Wing™ ideology about social safety net programs. Their entire concept is simply a baseless fever-dream of nonsense that simply does not reflect reality and flies in the face of the facts (like most things they believe).
They don’t care if more people work. As always, the cruelty is the point.