US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9891

The Trump administration is proposing a major shake-up in one of the country's most important "safety net" programs, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. Under the proposal, most SNAP recipients would lose much of their ability to choose the food they buy with their SNAP benefits.

The proposal is included in the Trump administration budget request for fiscal year 2019. It would require approval from Congress.

Under the proposal, which was announced Monday, low-income Americans who receive at least $90 a month — just over 80 percent of all SNAP recipients — would get about half of their benefits in the form of a "USDA Foods package." The package was described in the budget as consisting of "shelf-stable milk, ready to eat cereals, pasta, peanut butter, beans and canned fruit and vegetables." The boxes would not include fresh fruits or vegetables.

Currently, SNAP beneficiaries get money loaded onto an EBT card they can use to buy what they want as long as it falls under the guidelines. The administration says the move is a "cost-effective approach" with "no loss in food benefits to participants."

The USDA believes that state governments will be able to deliver this food at much less cost than SNAP recipients currently pay for food at retail stores — thus reducing the overall cost of the SNAP program by $129 billion over the next 10 years.

This and other changes in the SNAP program, according to the Trump administration, will reduce the SNAP budget by $213 billion over those years — cutting the program by almost 30 percent.

Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America, a hunger advocacy group that also helps clients access food-assistance services, said the administration's plan left him baffled. "They have managed to propose nearly the impossible, taking over $200 billion worth of food from low-income Americans while increasing bureaucracy and reducing choices," Berg says.

He says SNAP is efficient because it is a "free market model" that lets recipients shop at stores for their benefits. The Trump administration's proposal, he said, "is a far more intrusive, Big Government answer. They think a bureaucrat in D.C. is better at picking out what your family needs than you are?"

Douglas Greenaway, president of the National WIC Association, echoed that sentiment. "Removing choice from SNAP flies in the face of encouraging personal responsibility," he said. He says "the budget seems to assume that participating in SNAP is a character flaw."

It isn't clear how billions of dollars' worth of food each year would be distributed to millions of SNAP recipients who live all over the country, including dense urban areas and sparsely populated rural regions. The budget says states will have "substantial flexibility in designing the food box delivery system through existing infrastructure, partnerships or commercial/retail delivery services."

Critics of the proposal said distributing that much food presents a logistical nightmare. "Among the problems, it's going to be costly and take money out of the [SNAP] program from the administrative side. It's going to stigmatize people when they have to go to certain places to pick up benefits," says Jim Weill, president of the nonprofit Food Research and Action Center.

Stacy Dean, vice president for food assistance policy at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, called the proposal "radical and risky." The idea that the government could save money by distributing food itself, she said, is "ill-informed at best."

It isn't clear whether the boxes will come with directions on how to cook the foods inside. "It could be something that [SNAP recipients] don't even know how to make," notes Miguelina Diaz, whose team at Hunger Free America works directly with families to help them access food aid. "We deal with different people of different backgrounds. Limiting them by providing them a staple box would limit the choices of food they can prepare for their families."

According to Dean, from CBPP, the Trump administration wants to trim an additional $80 billion from the SNAP program by cutting off about 4 million people who currently receive food assistance. Most of them live in states that have decided to loosen the program's eligibility requirements slightly. Under the administration's proposal, states would no longer be able to do so.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said in early December that he wanted states to have more flexibility in doling out SNAP, announcing the agency wanted to hear about programs from states that don't increase the cost of the program and will combat what he said is fraud and waste. At the National Grocers Association conference over the weekend, Perdue said the budget has "common-sense reforms that call for greater consistency across nutritional programs."

Nutrition programs, including SNAP, made up about 80 percent of the USDA's budget in the most recent farm bill, making it the largest portion of agency spending. About 44 million people participated in SNAP each month in 2016, at an annual cost of $70.9 billion. Nearly two-thirds were under 18, over 60 or disabled, according to the USDA.

Congress largely ignored Trump's proposed budget for SNAP last year, when he wanted to cut the funding by a quarter. This time, it's a farm bill year, meaning many budgetary decisions will be made among the House and Senate agriculture committees.

Several critics we spoke with expressed skepticism that the proposed SNAP changes would pass in Congress. Even so, Weill says, "Whenever you see proposals like this that attack [SNAP] ... it harms the program even if it doesn't pass, in the long term reducing support for the program and stigmatizing people who use it."

On February 13 2018 12:29 NewSunshine wrote:
You need a real plan of action when you say "don't support the corruption". The lack of specifics in GH's argument is what's causing people to interpret it as a burn-it-all-down kind of statement, because it's a vague soapbox that doesn't mean anything. What form does not supporting the corruption take? Does it come in the form of not voting? Or does it come in the form of creating and fostering an environment where people who are openly corrupt get shut down on the spot? The latter seems reasonable, the former is completely ineffective. Not voting, or choosing to vote for a Jill Stein that has no chance of winning, doesn't change anything, and it doesn't make a statement.

What about trying to change the playing field so that we don't tolerate corrupt politicians in general? Now we're getting somewhere. But again, how do you do this? How do we get from where we are now to a place where people are held accountable for such impropriety? You still need to have a realistic plan, and you also need to be aware that the US is in a pretty fucked up place right now, and so a solution to the problem isn't going to happen overnight. The most realistic plan is for new people to join our existing political system, and change it from within. Someone like Bernie, for example, exists in stark relief to the very traditionally-Democrat Hillary, and would've been such a change. And we missed the mark in 2016 when they forced Hillary through over Bernie.

But regardless what happened in '16, it's still a complex problem with a long-form solution that's required. Simply telling people to stop supporting The Man isn't useful, and it's especially not useful when people ask you for specifics and you just say it again.

On February 13 2018 14:25 NewSunshine wrote:
I've no particular desire to talk in circles, I stand by what I said. Your problem with this whole thing is that it's not as simple as getting out there and hashing out some vague plan. Particulars are important, even hypotheticals. The fact that you haven't offered anything goes to show how opaque a problem it is, and how difficult it is to really solve, and that's something most of us try to deal with. Short of extraordinary circumstances, the American empire (so to speak) won't be overthrown in a day. For most people, it simply comes down to voting, it's just a matter of whether they've done their homework, or did they just watch Fox.

On February 13 2018 14:32 GreenHorizons wrote:


The problem is that you guys are so dependent you can't even let go of a party that is backing it's own openly corrupt billionaire and then stammer in bewilderment at Trump getting elected and Republicans inability to control him.

"It's too hard to stop", "I don't know how", "I feel worse when I don't have it", "but how will I live without it?" on and on and on. I've heard more excuses than I can count and they never get any better*.

+ Show Spoiler +

On February 13 2018 14:29 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Her approval numbers are lower than Trump's nevermind the fact that she will turn this into a "I told you so" tour. If I was in the GOP campaign team I would be celebrating right now.

https://twitter.com/Newsweek/status/963269079451791360

On February 13 2018 11:37 IgnE wrote:


is "people are yearning for the status quo" just code for "i am yearning for the status quo?" (ie "shut the fuck up we were talking about trump")

On February 13 2018 15:06 hunts wrote:
I don't see why Hillary would have low approval ratings. Losing to trump and not running a meme campaign don't change the fact that she is a fine politician. If I had to choose again, I would still vote for her over bernie every single time. I think people just want to be mad at her for losing to trump, even though their anger should be at the morons who voted for trump, and all the corruption and meddling of a foreign unfriendly nation that helped him get elected. Of course we do have people on the left who are convinced she is a dying senile super sick serial killer who has gotten hundreds of people murdered for getting too close to the truth about her uranium selling charity. but I really don't see any good reason why most people would dislike her, other than misinformation and just having poorly formed opinions and believing things that aren't true.

On February 13 2018 14:32 GreenHorizons wrote:


The problem is that you guys are so dependent you can't even let go of a party that is backing it's own openly corrupt billionaire and then stammer in bewilderment at Trump getting elected and Republicans inability to control him.

"It's too hard to stop", "I don't know how", "I feel worse when I don't have it", "but how will I live without it?" on and on and on. I've heard more excuses than I can count and they never get any better*.

+ Show Spoiler +

On February 13 2018 15:23 GreenHorizons wrote:


Couldn't possibly be things like standing by Rahm after it was discovered he helped keep the murder of Lequan McDonald quiet for electoral purposes. Her backing of the coup in Honduras, her perceptions on the exploitation of prison labor, her sketchy af deals and actions during the primary, her incessant lying about her emails, Libya, on and on and on. Surely it's just lies and propaganda causing people not to worship the queen.

On February 13 2018 15:28 ChristianS wrote:

You really like these analogies to domestic abuse or substance abuse. Let's tease them out a bit.

If I knew someone who was bouncing back and forth between two drugs/abusive partners, I would advise them to quit/break up with both and be sober/single for a while. What's the political analog to that? Anarchy?

Here, try this analogy on for size: suppose you have a weird, one-of-a-kind disease where your heart and lungs don't work when you're sober. You've found they work for some reason if you have heroine or methodone in your system, so you bounce back and forth between those.

Someone tells you those are addictive and bad for you. Do you quit them? There's a chance you could find another drug that keeps your body working, but it's also possible you couldn't, or that you'd find another drug but it'd be even more addictive and bad for you. What's more, for biochemical reasons you can't try out other drugs while the heroine and methodone are in your system. You'd have to quit those to even try to find an alternative.

Does it really seem so irrational to stick with the imperfect solution you have, rather than bet everything on the possibility that something else might be better?

Eric Boehlert is a writer at Shareblue.

On February 13 2018 15:43 GreenHorizons wrote:


Thank you. That's just it. You think not supporting corruption = anarchy and that without the two parties you'll simply wither away and die.

This thinking also implies that isn't already happening. If your life is rather comfortable the unknown feels like an attack against your life, if your one of the millions already enduring what it is you fear so much the idea of "what if I wither away and die" is what happens if they wait for you to come to your senses.

The honest truth is that the status quo is comfortable enough for you to prefer it to getting clean since getting clean is inevitably going to be uncomfortable.

On February 13 2018 15:33 hunts wrote:


If I recall you also belied the uranium one thing though, and that she omitted voter fraud to get elected over bernie? And of course we all know you thought she was basically dying and had a cognitive disorder.

have a source on her standing by the murder cover up? Because the only "articles" claiming so are about as trustworthy as fox and breitbart, and given your history I would not be surprised if her standing by this or being in any way involved or even mentioning it are made up. As for her being for exploitation of prison labor? Meh, I'd have to read her thoughts on it. As for coup in honduras, meh. We fuck in enough countries that I really don't care about one event in perticular, given those things are typical shitty politician behavior anyway.

On February 13 2018 16:01 ChristianS wrote:

Then literally, what is the political analogy to getting out of a relationship with both parties and being single for a while? If you're talking about a third party, that's not "single." That's "leave both of them for a new relationship."

On February 13 2018 16:32 ChristianS wrote:
So what? We abolish the Democrats, we abolish the Republicans, we don't go with a third party? We just go home, build communities there, and... nobody votes in federal elections? Again, my point is just that the analogy doesn't work. As long as we're electing people to federal government, we are, in the analogy, "in a relationship." If we somehow get an entire government of politicians unaffiliated with any political party, I suppose we could say that's analogous to casually hooking up with a bunch of different people, but at that point we're really stretching. Being "single" would require not electing anyone.

Look, I don't care that much anyway, and I need to go to bed. I'll just say that for the vast majority of people here, the following statements seem true:

1. There does not appear to be any politically viable way to replace either political party at the moment.
2. Even if you could, there doesn't seem to be any reason to think that hypothetical replacement parties would be better.
3. Meanwhile, there's a huge difference in outcomes depending on which of the two parties gets power.

Saying things like "the status quo is unacceptable" doesn't really engage with any of those three statements, which is why it tends to fall on deaf ears when you're preaching your "abandon the two parties" stuff.

On February 13 2018 16:32 ChristianS wrote:
So what? We abolish the Democrats, we abolish the Republicans, we don't go with a third party? We just go home, build communities there, and... nobody votes in federal elections? Again, my point is just that the analogy doesn't work. As long as we're electing people to federal government, we are, in the analogy, "in a relationship." If we somehow get an entire government of politicians unaffiliated with any political party, I suppose we could say that's analogous to casually hooking up with a bunch of different people, but at that point we're really stretching. Being "single" would require not electing anyone.

Look, I don't care that much anyway, and I need to go to bed. I'll just say that for the vast majority of people here, the following statements seem true:

1. There does not appear to be any politically viable way to replace either political party at the moment.
2. Even if you could, there doesn't seem to be any reason to think that hypothetical replacement parties would be better.
3. Meanwhile, there's a huge difference in outcomes depending on which of the two parties gets power.

Saying things like "the status quo is unacceptable" doesn't really engage with any of those three statements, which is why it tends to fall on deaf ears when you're preaching your "abandon the two parties" stuff.