Food Stamp Recipients Wish Critics Would Spend Some Time In Their Shoes

[LynneSin]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/20/food-stamps_n_1218248.html

Food Stamp Recipients Wish Critics Would Spend Some Time In Their Shoes

-- Some have advanced degrees and remember middle-class lives. Some work selling lingerie or building websites. They are white, black and Hispanic, young and old, homeowners and homeless. What they have in common: They're all on food stamps.

As the food stamp program has become an issue in the Republican presidential primary, with candidates seeking to tie President Barack Obama to the program's record numbers, The Associated Press interviewed recipients across the country and found many who wished that critics would spend some time in their shoes.

Most said they never expected to need food stamps, but the Great Recession, which wiped out millions of jobs, left them no choice. Some struggled with the idea of taking a handout; others saw it as their due, earned through years of working steady jobs. They yearn to get back to receiving a paycheck that will make food stamps unnecessary.

<<<<snip>>>>

In 2011, more than 45 million people – about one in seven Americans – received benefits from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the most ever. Fewer than 31 million people collected the benefits about three years earlier.

Forty-nine percent of recipients are white, 26 percent are black and 20 percent are Hispanic, according to Census data.

So almost 50% of the Food Stamp recipiants are white. Why does the GOP make it like minorities are the problem.

[cilla4progress]

1. The implication of the attacks from the right

is that fellow Americans should be allowed to starve to death, rather than receive foodstamps!

Hell, that's the only option, right?

[LynneSin]

2. How about we let those advocating starvation to set the example by starving first

I know Newt could stand to skip a few meals

[cilla4progress]

3. Right on -

it's so cruel. I work in a bankruptcy law practice as a paralegal. The humiliation of our clients who have to go on foodstamps...single moms; "retired" older workers (not out of choice); families. I'm amazed at how it crosses the spectrum. Would the Republicans rather see these fellow Americans starve, during these horrible economic times due to their own leaders, rather than receive foodstamps? What good Christians they are.

Which reminds me: amazing how the good evangelicals of S. Carolina really respond to the red meat thrown out by this ship of fools.

[Mojorabbit]

4. kick & R nt

[Historic NY]

5. And the GOP complains about class warfare.......

all while deriding people using food stamps to survive.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

6. One word: RACISM. Republicans just can't get racism out of their system. They use token members

of various races because they daily face the accusation that they are racist, and that's because THEY ARE RACIST.