Missouri Republicans are trying to ban food stamp recipients from buying steak and seafood

Washington Post ^ | 04/03/2015 | By Roberto A. Ferdman

[Responsibility2nd]

In 2013, Fox News proudly broadcast an interview with a young food stamp recipient who claimed to be using the government benefit to purchase lobster and sushi.

"This is the way I want to live and I don’t really see anything changing," Greenslate explained to Fox. “It’s free food; it’s awesome."

That story fit a longtime conservative suspicion that poor people use food stamps to purchase luxury items. Now, a Republican state lawmaker in Missouri is pushing for legislation that would stop people like Greenslate and severely limit what food stamp recipients can buy. The bill being proposed would ban the purchase with food stamps of "cookies, chips, energy drinks, soft drinks, seafood or steak."

"The intention of the bill is to get the food stamp program back to it's original intent, which is nutrition assistance," said Rick Brattin, the representative who is sponsoring the proposed legislation.

Curbing food stamp purchases of cookies, chips, energy drinks, and soft drinks at least falls in line with the food stamp program's mission to provide nutrition. Nutrition experts are already discussing whether to remove unhealthy items from the list of foods participants can buy.

But seafood and steak? Seafood has been shown, time and again, to be a healthy part of any diet. And steak is such a broad category that it's essentially banning people from buying any flat cuts of beef, from porterhouse to flank.

"It just seems really repressive," said Mark Rank, a professor at...

[Catsrus]

Ever heard of using a crockpot? It slow cooks ll day while you are at work. Thus, no need to throw in a frozen pizza when you get home.

[taxcontrol]

LOL either way, I would bet that the welfare rolls would be cut in half in a few months.

[Leep]

Isn’t is suppose to be good for the environment not to eat steak and seafood?

[KittenClaws]

Good Luck with that!! Stood behind a person in the checkout line at Walmart with a cart full of spare ribs and steaks he pulled out the link card to pay for it all and I paid cash for my hot dogs and frozen pizza.
______________________

I had the same experience, though mine was hamburger helper.

As an added note, they were still loading all of their groceries in a brand new mini-van as I carried mine to my old buick 98....

[mrsmith]

“Curbing food stamp purchases of cookies, chips, energy drinks, and soft drinks at least falls in line with the food stamp program’s mission to provide nutrition.”

But it doesn’t fall in line with Food Stamps first mission: to profit donors and the media!

[MrB]

I think some of you on here would fit in nicely with the tyranny crowd.

---

What’s the logical connection between not wanting the money confiscated from our paychecks to go to luxury items we can’t afford (because of the confiscation)

to wanting “tyranny”?

I’ve seen leftists argue this - that if you oppose their theft, somehow YOU’RE the one that’s a tyrant,
but I expect more logic out of a conservative.

[martinidon]

Why would Republicans get involved with this? It they really want to do something about food stamps focus on the real issues; like abuse, fraud and programs that discourage people getting on food stamps. One of the Northeast states came up with a program that recipients of state aid were required to participate in volunteer work for the State. They saw a huge reduction in participants in a very short time period. This law is a feel good law and does not address the issue.

[MrB]

I don’t know why they call that stuff hamburger helper - it does just fine by itself!

[MSF BU]

Better yet, let them go to the food kitchen

[Rides_A_Red_Horse]

When the state pays for your meals with tax dollars don’t be surprised if the state decides what you can eat.

[A CA Guy]

should be temporary.

[Slyfox]

When I was a kid, my dad worked in the shop for Fisher Body in Flint MI. My parents had ten children which meant resources were stretched real tight. So tight in fact that we qualified for surplus foods. I remember standing in line waiting for the oatmeal, butter, cheese, and dried milk. My mother, bless her heart made the best of a trying situation and would buy "whole" milk and add the dried milk to it, that way we'd get 2 gallons of milk out of the deal. But I will tell you she had a hard time whipping the dried milk to get rid of the lumps. When we drank it we had to sift it through our teeth. Fortunately, it did not taste bad.

On a house hunt we entered this one house that had probably nine bedrooms. Priced right. The realtor told us that the people living there at that time were a single mom and three daughters who were on food stamps. I couldn't help looking in the open cupboards in which held at least six packages of Pepperidge Farm cookies.

As a nine-year-old I understood the injustice of knowing that my parents were doing the difficult thing by not getting food stamps and that we were paying for that lady and her daughters to eat those expensive cookies.

Yeah, we got help from getting surplus foods but we also had to pay for someone else to get to splurge on cookies. It still chaffs my hide.

[CorporateStepsister]

Fully agree.

There are a lot of people who are just down on their luck and want to avoid living on the street and of course, others are just broken by life and just can’t carry on.

I wonder if anyone on this thread would refuse stamps and welfare if they were facing life on the street.

[LadyBuck]

Back in the day when grocery baggers were college students trying to get by and not “special”, we had our own form of social justice, since we saw everything coming down the conveyor belt.

How about a love letter to theose folks:

1. Sorry your kid’s custom cake got smushed. You still got free cake courtesy of the gal that bagged it.

2. Fancy bread squished under heavy stuff? It’s still edible.

3. Eggs - well, it takes a few cracked eggs...

4. Sorry about the ripped packaging on your specialty meats. Lowlife baggers like us have never dealt with it, since we only pay for it, but cannot afford it ourselves.

5. Since you insisted we also hand-load your free-shit haul, please don’t be mad if the wind in the parking lot pushes the cart of ill-gotten gains into your Mac-Daddy Caddy. My boss already posted signs about cart damage when you decided to shop/loot here.

I worked at the least politically correct grocery store in Columbus....and yet they still came back for more. It was a game for all & we employees had a blast one-upping the FSA class.. Shame it didn’t last.

[pallis]

That will be a tough row to hoe. Grocery stores and chains are heavily subsidized by EBT cards. Half of them would go out of business, if the government money were to stop pouring in. The same goes for the markets that supply steaks and seafood. A lot of them will be wiped out. On the flip side of that is the black market. A lot of steaks and seafood find their way to other people who can’t get the EBT cards, and can’t afford to pay market prices for better food. They buy from the entrepreneurial street vendors.

[KittenClaws]

Liberals are usually perfectly happy with the government telling people what to eat and how to spend their money

When it is THEIR money that THEY worked for, they can spend it however they wish!

The TYRANNY here is, the government FORCING TAXPAYERS to work and do without while the TAKERS lounge around eating Steak and Lobster like kings. /rant

[a fool in paradise]

How cruel!

[GeronL]

yummy

[NEMDF]

I like how you think, and we should promote the restrictions with that logic.

[KittenClaws]

I don’t know why they call that stuff hamburger helper - it does just fine by itself!
_______________________

LOL! I saw what you did there!