Posted on 07/11/2011 8:57:37 AM PDT by STJPII
The number of food-stamp recipients has soared to 44 million from 26 million in 2007. Not surprisingly, fraud and abuse are rampant..Millionaires are now legally entitled to collect food stamps as long as they have little or no monthly income. Thirty-five states have abolished asset tests for most food-stamp recipients. These and similar "paperwork reduction" reforms advocated by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) are turning the food-stamp program into a magnet for abuses and absurdities.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Why are there so many redundent programs: WIC, Welfare, Food-Stamps, Free School meals, etc.???
If a family gets food stamps, can anyone explain to me why they don't have to use them to pay for school lunch?
They're advertising for NEW Food Stamp recipients on the radio here. It's okay. It's okay, even if you own a house and a car (but not a private jet).
ML/NJ
Why are there so many redundant posts?
;-)
Seriously, though, the answer is that this way they can hide all the money they spend. Note that the food stamps program is now bigger than all of the rest of the USDA budget combined...actual Agriculture programs are a side part of the USDA now.
And most people think all that spending is under Health and Human Services, so when they look at the HHS budget, they don’t realize they’re seeing only part of the spending.
Also, the way millionaires can get food stamps illustrates how ridiculous it is to define “rich” by income rather than wealth.
and anyone on that program can get a free cell-phone!
from the programs, you would think the govt was rolling in cash - not broke.
we need to change the terms to rich and high income.
watch the hollywood rats squeal if you really tried to tax assets..
There is a huge rip off of the system going on, tremendous corruption and dishonesty throughout society. It’s not just food stamps.
So someone should have to sell their car and house immediately after getting laid off just so their family won’t go hungry? Is that what we’re proposing here?
That idea strikes me as more absurd than giving food stamps to a millionaire.
Yep, free cell phones are a big big entitlement now.
People are afraid to point fingers and actually deny “poor people” anything. Poor people are driving new suv’s, carrying Gucci bags, free cell phones standard. This is NOT an exaggeration. It’s everyday experience.
Comrade, you ask silly questions. Each tentacle of the fedgov needs its own infrastructure. Communications staff, computer techs, support staff of all kinds, field offices, assistants to the assistant director, mail room, motor pool, lobbyists, day care, human resources, etc., etc. The more programs, the more government employees. Do you understand now? Redundancy is the goal.
Why are there so many redundant posts here on FR? Imponderable, I say.
yes, not just welfare and foodstamps on the public teat ... many if not most govt jobs are useless positions that could be eliminated - most with great benefits and pensions - good luck getting your nice 100k govt job if you are white, straight male!! govt jobs are for blacks and gays.
I think the qualifying threshold for benefits is like 34K or something.
You've got that right. I had zero, and I mean ZERO income in the 11th month after my layoff from Nortel, because the company with which I'd had a 3-month short-term contract sent their unemployment payments to the wrong state. I spent a month trying to straighten that out before my first unemployment check was cut.
We managed to scrape by until my hire date of my new job, but we would have been eligible for Food Stamps for that month even though my car was worth $7,000 and my house was worth $225,000.
I would feel no shame whatsoever if I could get on food stamps. It would take years for me to get back what they already stole.
Tell you what Pal, you buy food for people you don't know and leave me out of it. Have these people ever heard of saving for a rainy day? Do they have any family or friends? Do they belong to a church or a synagogue?
Immediately after getting laid off? Ever heard of unemployment insurance?
FTR, I haven't had any work at all this entire year; and I'm not eligible for unemployment. I don't expect you to care, and you shouldn't be FORCED to care.
ML/NJ
Each new program allows some federal/state/county/city government bureaucracy to grow in size. Each new program allows its founding agency to reward its political friends with jobs as administrators, assistants to administrators, deputy assistants, etc. By the time the program has been fleshed out and starts operating, huge amounts of money have been spent on overhead.
The primary goal of the head of any government agency is to grow his fiefdom, not to solve the problem it was intended to solve.
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