Good grief Republicans, what is your problem with food stamps, of all things? People actually need them from time to time.
Known today as SNAP, an acronym for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, food stamps cost us next to nothing in the overall scheme of the wealthiest nation on the planet. Americans from all around our country — yes, in your neighborhood too — use SNAP benefits. They don’t plan to or scheme to, it’s not a mark of luxury, but it is a helpful option so those going through a rough patch can still get food on the table for their families. In some cases SNAP users already work several jobs to make ends meet, in addition to going to school. Like Medicaid other long-running, helpful programs that have served Americans well for decades that you and your party are so eager to demolish, these have been cut beyond the bone in the new House budget, passed in the middle of the night by a single vote. Not exactly a mandate.
Food stamps have been an effective and successful program of our federal government for decades, just as National Parks are not only effective and successful, but are America’s Best Idea and a source of national pride and tourism revenue for local economies. Along with National Forests, the National Weather Service and NOAA, air traffic controllers and the FAA, the Veterans Administration (VA), the “soft power” genius that was USAID, food inspectors, cancer research, Head Start, Reading is Fundamental (RIF), Sesame Street, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Medicaid and Medicare.
Why do you continually rail against the best of our nation? Why do you allow Fox News to keep you in a constant state of fury? Why do you allow the wealthiest one percent to poison you against your own country, again and again, with toxic bills like what was passed in the middle of the night in D.C. disguised as a budget? Don’t you think if they were less embarrassed and ashamed by it Republican legislators would’ve been holding hearings on it during the day, when people are actually awake, instead of waiting to get a one-vote majority to pass it in the dead of night?
Don’t you think Republican legislators would’ve been out at town halls meeting with their constituents to answer questions about it if there was a shred of goodness in the budget? Instead, they ran away from their voters to avoid having to answer questions about their culpability in voting for it. And why? Because they’re afraid of being “primaried?” Afraid of crossing Dear Leader? If that’s the case, then maybe they shouldn’t be in Congress on your dime to begin with.
Look, if you think you’re paying too much in taxes, you probably are. And now that Dear Leader’s bill has made it through the House with the help of “Christian” zombie Mike Johnson and his cowardly, right-wing fanatics who lurked in the back rows of our once mighty Congress turned Politburo all night hoping not to be seen until they voted, you WILL be paying more in taxes. And for everything else. Because this budget isn’t designed for regular working Americans, it’s designed to give the wealthiest Americans a $4 trillion tax break. You know whose back that falls on? Ours. So who’s really telling you food stamps and National Parks are bad ideas?
Why don’t you quit allowing the wealthiest one percent to poison you against your fellow Americans, and join the rest of your neighbors to ensure the wealthy are taxed and pay their fair share, just as they were during the 1950s — the decade you claim to love so much — when the tax rate on the wealthiest was well over 80 percent.
Believe me, the rich will be fine. They’re rich. I’m not worried about them. I don’t know why you are.