Hawley Is Making The Wrong Argument For More Food Stamp Welfare
the article critiques Republican Senator Josh Hawley’s recent New York Times op-ed urging Congress to continue funding the federal food stamps program, wich is set to expire soon. Hawley portrays food stamps as a vital lifeline for millions of needy Americans and appeals to the country’s generosity to keep supporting the roughly 42 million beneficiaries. However, the author challenges Hawley’s position by highlighting the vast scale of recipients-equivalent to three times the population of the U.S.’s three largest cities combined-and questioning the efficient use of these funds. The piece points out that many recipients may not be truly needy, citing examples from social media where able-bodied individuals appear to rely heavily on benefits without working. The author demands that if the program is to continue,stricter measures must be implemented to ensure aid reaches only those genuinely in need and discourages long-term dependence. Ultimately, the article calls for honest reform over romanticizing welfare programs and criticizes the large federal expenditure without accountability.
If you were indifferent about the federal food stamps program drying up come Saturday, go read Republican Sen. Josh Hawley’s op-ed in the New York Times this week. It’ll make you wish the day could just get here already.
As Hawley has done with other forms of obscene welfare, he’s once again romanticizing the type of people who receive it — “the widow and the orphan” — and calling on Congress to push out more. “Saturday will be another grim milestone,” he wrote Tuesday. “That is the day about 42 million Americans will lose federal food assistance. Congress must not let that happen. America is a great and wealthy nation, and our most important wealth is our generosity of spirit.”
See there? Just tap into that generosity of spirit of yours and let’s make sure more than 40 million people are fed without having to use their own money!
It’s awe-inspiring that a leader of this country, a Republican no less, can acknowledge that more than 40 million people — a tenth of the population — supposedly can’t feed themselves without a welfare program and instead of proposing a solution to eliminate that problem, he calls on the government to ensure that the rest of us get to keep paying it — out of that famous “generosity of spirit,” of course.
Does Hawley know that 42 million is an absurd number that pretty much nobody can comprehend in terms of how many people it really is? If you combined all the people in America’s three most populous cities — that’s New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago — that would still only be about 15 million people, or roughly a third of the number of people who allegedly need food stamps in this country. In other words, triple the total number of people in those three major cities combined, and that’s how many Americans (as well as noncitizens) are getting groceries without paying.
What’s the matter? Don’t you have a heart?
In his op-ed, Hawley called food stamps “a lifeline that permits the needy to purchase basic food items at the grocery store.” He said, “There is no reason any of these residents of my state — or any other American who qualifies for food assistance — should go hungry,” because, “We can afford to provide the help.” And if none of that infuriates you enough, Hawley said, “Of course, aid should be limited to those who truly need it.”
That’s the problem, Joshua. We know — everyone knows — it’s not “limited to those who truly need it.” We know the “assistance” mostly helps people instead pay for a new iPhone every year.
The senator cited a few touching examples of the idyllic food stamp recipient — a grandmother and a couple of disabled people — but I’ll see his truly needy and raise him the first five videos you see on TikTok when you search “food stamps.” They are, almost without exception, women who seem perfectly able-bodied, bemoaning the coming cut off because it means they’re about to lose thousands of dollars a month that they use to feed seven, eight, or nine children.
One woman on the app declares in a video that she gets $3,000 monthly in food stamps for her family of eight. “I have no income. So, obviously I’m going to get the full benefit amount,” she says. “Does that make you mad, too? Does it make you mad that the government is helping me feed my children? … Be mad. Stay mad. How else am I going to feed my kids? I don’t have a job.” (Yes, these people voluntarily post videos like this. It’s an amazing app.)
I’d like Josh Hawley to justify asking me and everyone else to foot the bill for this person and her litter of kids that she can’t afford. He needs to explain why it’s imperative that we turn the welfare hose back on without including measures to prevent taxpayer-funded “assistance” going to anyone but the most desperate. And if it absolutely must go to anyone else, I want to know how Hawley intends to make it as temporary and painful as possible for them as they receive it.
The federal budget for the food stamps program is roughly $100 billion. And while I know it’s no cause for alarm to Hawley that 42 million people are getting that money, my spirit isn’t feeling so generous these days. It hasn’t for a very long time.
If the senator wants more Americans to care about his precious welfare as much as he does, he can stop romanticizing it and first prove he’s interested in making sure only the people who need it are getting it. That’s not what he’s doing right now.
Eddie Scarry is the D.C. columnist at The Federalist and author of “Traitors: The Democrat Party’s Collapse into Anti-American Filth.”
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