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You are here: Home / Politics / Poverty / Fuck The Poor / Here’s An Example Of Their Priorities

Here’s An Example Of Their Priorities

by John Cole|  April 17, 201212:30 pm| 61 Comments

This post is in: Fuck The Poor, I Can't Believe We're Losing to These People, Sociopaths

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Fresh off their vote to defeat taxing multimillionaires, the Republicans have found a place to look for some cuts:

Republicans controlling the House are eying big cuts to food stamps and would make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to claim child tax credits as they piece together legislation to cut $261 billion in the coming decade.

It’s the first step in a GOP exercise aimed at cutting domestic programs to forestall big Pentagon budget cuts next year.

The cuts to food stamps would reduce the monthly benefit for a family of four by almost $60 and would force up to 3 million people off the program altogether by tightening eligibility.

Anything to avoid cutting those lucrative defense contracts or requiring millionaires to pay their fair share.

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Reader Interactions

61Comments

  1. 1.

    rikyrah

    April 17, 2012 at 12:32 pm

    Because THIS is who they are.

  2. 2.

    General Stuck

    April 17, 2012 at 12:35 pm

    The cuts to food stamps would reduce the monthly benefit for a family of four by almost $60 and would force up to 3 million people off the program altogether by tightening eligibility.

    One of the top reasons I hate these soul less motherfuckers. But blocking the Buffet Rule was hunky dory. Jaysus, this shit is depressing.

  3. 3.

    cathyx

    April 17, 2012 at 12:35 pm

    I didn’t know that illegal immigrants file taxes.

  4. 4.

    cathyx

    April 17, 2012 at 12:36 pm

    Cutting foodstamps is the new black. It’s slimming.

  5. 5.

    scav

    April 17, 2012 at 12:38 pm

    ‘Scuse, will repost this from bottom of last thread as is slightly less OT here

    Speaking semi-tangentially about the nation’s (and ghoulish obsessives’ party) holy and shalt-­not-­be­-touched­-or-­infringed­upon priorities, have a peek at a world map of arms spending. Map ahould start out with spending as a percentage of GDP (hey! look at our spiritual neighbors under the skin!) and then you can switch over to the usual spending in cast (where we entirely expectedly have no neighbors).

  6. 6.

    mai naem

    April 17, 2012 at 12:39 pm

    Jeezus I just wanna move from this country. This is one of the 2 parties in this country and they are just a*holes. No other way to describe them. And 27 percent of the population are going to vote for them even if they are found to have “666” tattooed on their front teeth and have visible horns coming out of their heads, and the Dem. opponent is revealed to be Jesus Christ himself.

  7. 7.

    Hunter Gathers

    April 17, 2012 at 12:40 pm

    Anything to avoid cutting those lucrative defense contracts or requiring millionaires to pay their fair share.

    But I’m told that the GOP is the only party truly serious about deficit reduction. It’s better , for the nation overall, for the upper class to continue to spend what most people make in a year on their 5-diamond Ashley Madison whores than for poor children to eat 3 times a day. And dirty browns don’t deserve to eat, period.

  8. 8.

    redshirt

    April 17, 2012 at 12:41 pm

    How much do food stamps cost us per year? In contrast, how much do oil subsidies to Exxon and the like cost us per year?

  9. 9.

    Linnaeus

    April 17, 2012 at 12:44 pm

    Guided missiles and misguided men.

  10. 10.

    Deen

    April 17, 2012 at 12:46 pm

    And somehow, unlike with the Buffett rule, the fact that this measure won’t solve all their problems is not an objection.

  11. 11.

    burnt

    April 17, 2012 at 12:50 pm

    @redshirt: SNAP (aka food stamps) cost about $78 billion in fiscal 2011. Oil industry subsidies were about $4 billion. SNAP is about the best stimulus we can get and it served about 45 million people in fiscal 2011. We should be expanding it not shrinking it.

  12. 12.

    meander

    April 17, 2012 at 12:51 pm

    Whenever something sensible like the Buffett/Reagan rule is proposed, the GOP screams and howls like a child in a Force 5 temper tantrum that the savings from that proposal won’t close the deficit, won’t erase the debt. It’s funny how we don’t hear that argument made for this proposal, which also won’t close the deficit or erase the debt.

    The Daily Show had a great bit about this a few weeks ago: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-18-2011/world-of-class-warfare—the-poor-s-free-ride-is-over

    TDS’s summary of the piece: “The government could raise $700 billion by either taking half of everything earned by the bottom 50% or by raising the marginal tax rate on the top two percent.”

  13. 13.

    Uncle Cosmo

    April 17, 2012 at 12:53 pm

    Bastards. They keep giving more & more of the pie to their billionaire masters & let the rest fight over what’s left–making sure to con their useful-idiot followers into believing that what’s left is all there is & every penny that goes to someone else who’s getting screwed by the 1% is coming right out of their own pocket…

    Bastards.

  14. 14.

    Linda Featheringill

    April 17, 2012 at 12:53 pm

    @General Stuck: #2

    Jaysus, this shit is depressing.

    Yes.

  15. 15.

    RP

    April 17, 2012 at 12:53 pm

    Look, all we need to do is find the swamp that holds their submerged lair. Once we nuke it from orbit (to mix my pop culture references), we’ll be golden.

  16. 16.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    April 17, 2012 at 12:53 pm

    If it wasn’t fore the theater of cruelty the way they try to avoid raising taxes or cutting defense is hilarious in its futility. The only place they can balance the budget is in defense and taxes.

  17. 17.

    Comrade Dread

    April 17, 2012 at 12:53 pm

    16 He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?” declares the LORD.

    17 “But your eyes and your heart are set only on dishonest gain, on shedding innocent blood and on oppression and extortion.”

    If the judgement of God is to come upon this nation, I have little doubt that it will come because of the conduct of the leaders we have chosen.

  18. 18.

    danimal

    April 17, 2012 at 12:55 pm

    Uh oh. The zombie-eyed granny starver has eaten the remaining fetid brain tissue of the GOP House caucus. This can’t be good.

  19. 19.

    rlrr

    April 17, 2012 at 12:56 pm

    @redshirt:

    “Only a class warrior would ask that question.”
    — the GOP

  20. 20.

    TooManyJens

    April 17, 2012 at 12:57 pm

    Could someone take me out of moderation, please? I think it’s because I put two links in my comment.

  21. 21.

    Phylllis

    April 17, 2012 at 12:57 pm

    Huh. Where is the grocery and convenience store lobby in all this? Or Wal-Mart, for that matter, who by process of elimination is probably the biggest food stamp retailer out there.

    Food stamp ‘recipients’ don’t eat the food stamps, or hoard them, they use them to buy food at grocery and convenience stores. Retailers are paid, usually by electronic transfer of funds, for the food stamps they take in. Reduce food stamp benefits, and you reduce grocery store revenue.

  22. 22.

    No One of Consequence

    April 17, 2012 at 12:59 pm

    @redshirt:
    quick googling leads me to conclude somewhere in the neighborhood of ~45 billion or so in Oil and Gas subsidies…

    Record profits and all, you know…

    – NOoC

  23. 23.

    yet another jeff

    April 17, 2012 at 1:00 pm

    Freedomization!

  24. 24.

    Brachiator

    April 17, 2012 at 1:01 pm

    Republicans controlling the House are eying big cuts to food stamps and would make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to claim child tax credits as they piece together legislation to cut $261 billion in the coming decade.

    Obama is, after all, the food stamp president, so by going after food stamps, the GOP is showing serious courage in going after this symbol of shiftlessness. Because, as we all know, in Real White America, only nonwhites get food stamps. A Real American White Patriot would let his family starve before accepting government cheese, safe in the knowledge that the Baby Jebus would drop off a cornucopia. For the rest, well, the Hunger Games is a documentary.

    And after the initiation of their successful war on women, it’s only right that the GOP open a second front in the war on illegal immigrants. Hell, I expect the GOP to double down and select a Latino VP candidate who will kick an illegal into a ditch to prove his coservative bona fides.

    But don’t worry. No matter what the GOP does to increase the misery of ordinary people, Mittens will pivot toward the middle. The Deity and Seven Wise Pundits told me so.

  25. 25.

    Jim Pharo

    April 17, 2012 at 1:01 pm

    It’s important when we speak about this to note just how much money we’re talking about. A $60 cut might be a lot or a little.

    I just looked up and found NM’s program, which pays up to $567 a month for four persons.

    I wonder how many commenters here can manage to feed four people for a month for $567.

    It’s very important that we start to speak plainly about benefits, entitlements, SS, etc. Far too many people have no idea how meager our “safety net” really is. Once you realize this, it’s simply amazing that there is an organized party devoted to reducing it even further.

    America is a cruel country.

  26. 26.

    TooManyJens

    April 17, 2012 at 1:07 pm

    Reposting with only one link: ALEC is supposedly getting out of the voter suppression game to spend more time with its family advocating for 1%-er economic policy such as, presumably, cutting food stamps.

    You’ll have to look up Color of Change’s response on your own.

  27. 27.

    dedc79

    April 17, 2012 at 1:11 pm

    If we were to apply McConnell or Romney’s logic for opposing the Buffett rule to this proposal, why would we bother with cutting such a small program when it won’t solve the bigger deficit/debt issues facing our country?

    Oh right, because they’re all full of ****

  28. 28.

    terraformer

    April 17, 2012 at 1:20 pm

    As usual, no conscience, go for broke, blatant antagonizing of non-rich, etc. Daring anyone to stop them.

    Also as usual, Pierce nails it :

    Since we have determined through the years that we shall have two and only two political parties in this country, the irrationality of one of them is such a grave threat to good governance that the other party has an affirmative obligation to the country to make the irrational party pay such a fearsome price for its indulgent eccentricity that it must reform itself or risk permanent irrelevance. Unfortunately, that task falls to the other creaky vehicle, the Democratic party, which has proven spectacularly ill suited to it.

  29. 29.

    fasteddie9318

    April 17, 2012 at 1:25 pm

    Where is the fucking ad campaign? Why are Democrats not carpeting the airwaves with “Republicans protect tax breaks for the wealthy and big government contracts for their corporate backers, but when it comes to MOTHERFUCKING FOOD FUCKING STAMPS FOR PEOPLE WHO WOULD LITERALLY FUCKING STARVE WITHOUT THEM, THEY’RE ALL ABOUT FISCAL FUCKING DISCIPLINE!” Get Samuel L. Jackson to do it.

  30. 30.

    sherparick

    April 17, 2012 at 1:25 pm

    This is all about “shared sacrifice.” We share the sacrfice of the poor and weak in honor of the rich and strong.

    Washington Monthly linked to the following story from Missouri where poor and abused children are being asked to make most of the “shared sacrifice.”
    “http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/missouri-may-slash-children-s-services/article_a79e543a-bbf1-58f6-a8c5-ad319be8444a.html

    Reading the comments in the St. Louis newspapers (right wing response was that they should not have to pay any of thier tax dollars for someone else’s kids (so much for the sacredness of life – I guess it only applies from 2-weeks before conception to birth) is pretty depressing stuff. Some of our fellow Americans have really, really gone down some deep dark snake holes with their tresured resentments at the others.

  31. 31.

    Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor

    April 17, 2012 at 1:30 pm

    I’m sure all those devout Evangelical Christians will stand up and speak out for the starving poor, just like their beloved Messiah would do.

  32. 32.

    El Cid

    April 17, 2012 at 1:31 pm

    Why aren’t these RINO’s proposing programs to literally take food out of these kids’ mouths?

    Fuck this indirect “less food aid so less food” approach. So not mean and direct enough.

    We need people empowered to go around our neighborhoods and take food out of these useless eaters’ alien mouths any time they put food in them.

  33. 33.

    MariedeGournay

    April 17, 2012 at 1:31 pm

    I just fucking loathe them.

  34. 34.

    Rommie

    April 17, 2012 at 1:33 pm

    @Jim Pharo: The way to “solve” the meager problem is to start dictating WHAT you can buy with those fewer food stamps. You’ll eat your Government Rations, and you’ll like them!

    It’s just another throwback to the glorious Gilded Age with modern company stores. Freedom! for charity with conditions.

  35. 35.

    JPL

    April 17, 2012 at 1:33 pm

    In the words of a wise man

    A couple thoughts. First, how does the media even pretend that the Republicans stand for anything but the wealthy? Between votes like this and the Ryan plan, how can they keep pretending otherwise.

  36. 36.

    Jennifer

    April 17, 2012 at 1:34 pm

    Here’s your ad campaign:

    “FDR, 1932: The New Deal.
    GOP, 2012: The Raw Deal.”

    Repeat it until people are as sick of it as they are of “thrown under the bus.”

  37. 37.

    TenguPhule

    April 17, 2012 at 1:35 pm

    The cuts to food stamps would reduce the monthly benefit for a family of four by almost $60 and would force up to 3 million people off the program altogether by tightening eligibility.

    If even 1% of those three million can be armed and pointed in the right direction, the GOP bigwigs can be mobbed and butchered.

  38. 38.

    Jennifer

    April 17, 2012 at 1:39 pm

    @TenguPhule:

    …the GOP bigwigs can be mobbed and butchered.

    Yeah, but I don’t think they’d be very tasty, and probably not very good nutrition…in fact they might even be toxic. Since our goal here is to help all Americans have access to adequate supplies of healthful food, I don’t think this suggestion meets that requirement.

    It is, however, a brilliant idea nonetheless.

  39. 39.

    scav

    April 17, 2012 at 1:41 pm

    People are being Trickled to death, I’ve no doubt. Put that over a picture of a kid with a plate with the red-no-go-slash over it.

  40. 40.

    scav

    April 17, 2012 at 1:43 pm

    @Jennifer: Lot of grease on them – any chance of using them like discarded deep-frying fat and powering modified cars? That’d burn their hide in more ways than one.

  41. 41.

    RalfW

    April 17, 2012 at 1:44 pm

    I’m really upset at all this class warfare talk.

    Actual class warfare, y’know, starving people, pushing them into the streets or stripping away their health insurance? No problem.

    But it damn well better not pierce my consciousness or appear on my TeeVee, except in disdainful, blathering lies from perky white people on Fux.

  42. 42.

    Linnaeus

    April 17, 2012 at 1:46 pm

    Sometimes when I read about stuff like this, I wonder what it’s going to take to get this country off the path it’s currently on.

  43. 43.

    Cris (without an H)

    April 17, 2012 at 1:51 pm

    @burnt: Oil industry subsidies were about $4 billion.

    @No One of Consequence: quick googling leads me to conclude somewhere in the neighborhood of ~45 billion or so in Oil and Gas subsidies…

    Obviously these don’t match up. I see that the President is asking to eliminate $4 billion in oil subsidies, so there’s that number. Not sure where the 45 billion comes from, unless it’s a multiple-year total.

    Meanwhile, a spreadsheet from Oil Change International shows annual average subsidies in 2000-2002 being about $4bn, and 2008-2010 about $12bn. And George W. Bush Institute fellow Bernard L. Weinstein tells me Obama is a big fat liar because they’re tax breaks, not subsidies, and it’s only 2.8 billion you big fat liberal liars. Balance!

  44. 44.

    Cris (without an H)

    April 17, 2012 at 1:52 pm

    I know it’s because of the three-link limit, but I’d like to pretend my comment went into moderation because of a link to the odious New York Post.

  45. 45.

    Catsy

    April 17, 2012 at 1:52 pm

    @efgoldman:

    The Democratic party has an obligation to beat the Republican party so badly, over and over again, that rationality once again becomes a quality to be desired. It must be done by persuading the country of this simple fact. It cannot be done by reasoning with the Republicans, because the next two generations of them are too far gone.

    I want this on billboards across the country.

    The degree to which the Republican Party has gone completely drooling bugfuck insane and entirely rejected reality and rational thought has no precedent in this country.

  46. 46.

    Martin

    April 17, 2012 at 1:57 pm

    You’d think the GOP would at least try to not appear to be implementing Anders Breiviks’ objectives in realtime as he expresses them in court.

  47. 47.

    gaz

    April 17, 2012 at 2:19 pm

    @Catsy: JBS, 1964

  48. 48.

    Mike in NC

    April 17, 2012 at 2:23 pm

    Republicans controlling the House are eying big cuts to food stamps and would make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to claim child tax credits as they piece together legislation to cut $261 billion in the coming decade.

    This is the sort of thing that “should only be discussed in quiet rooms” as their soon-to-be nominee suggested.

  49. 49.

    lou

    April 17, 2012 at 2:29 pm

    But the “Christians” tell us it’s up to the church to make sure the poor are cared for, doncha know?
    http://www.npr.org/2012/04/16/150568478/christian-conservatives-poverty-not-government-business

    Warning: It’s a nauseating article.

  50. 50.

    Catsy

    April 17, 2012 at 2:30 pm

    @gaz: No, I don’t think so. The John Birch Society was/is a malignant, regressive, extremist collection of racist, bigoted, right-wing nutjob conspiracy theorists. They were the teabaggers of the time.

    But they had nothing on the degree to which the modern GOP has rejected the legitimacy of science, rationality, and reality itself. You have to go back to the Civil War to find anything that even compares to the extremes to which the GOP is going to delegitimize and dismantle democracy and roll back the last four hundred years of scientific and philosophical progress.

    The modern GOP is a collection of sociopaths and nihilists, aided and abetted by deeply ignorant voters that they knowingly and deliberately mislead and for whom they’ve expended significant effort to create a bubble of alternative reality.

    Seriously. Birchers are nuts, but by comparison they’re the sane ones.

  51. 51.

    gene108

    April 17, 2012 at 2:30 pm

    @fasteddie9318:

    America has a strong history of laws being based on “sticking it to them“, because we are not that kind of people.

    The whole notion of “but there for the grace of God go I” is missing from America.

    We are doing things the right way, but they are taking advantage of our hard work.

    I don’t know, if this mind set is ever going to change. Until it does, you will never end up with a stronger social safety net.

  52. 52.

    Gretchen

    April 17, 2012 at 2:37 pm

    Fuck these fucking fuckers. Really. They’ve gone from zombie-eyed granny-starvers, to zombie-eyed baby-starvers. I hope they all starve and rot and die.

  53. 53.

    Interrobang

    April 17, 2012 at 2:37 pm

    You’d think that sane people would at least kind of support a social safety net, if only because starving, desperate people tend to do things like break into your house and steal your stuff. Sure, you can then probably have them incarcerated in some kind of for-profit prison hellhole, but is it honestly worth the risk that some desperate poor isn’t going to use a pair of scissors on you 90 times, then take your credit cards and anything else he thinks he can sell?

    I’m not talking about the people who are rich enough to live in gated communities with private security guards, I’m talking about the sort of middle-class dimwits like my folks, who seem to genuinely resent the money and effort we as a society have to spend to make sure we don’t have roving mobs of illiterate, desperate, diseased poor people everywhere. I dun’ get it.

  54. 54.

    gene108

    April 17, 2012 at 2:39 pm

    @JPL:

    You have to fight for your right(s) to party eat. If the poor would bother to vote in proportion to their percentage of the population, you could see a shift in policy.

    As it stands, since so few people vote, it doesn’t matter that 72% would favor a 30% tax on millionaires or whatever, because in a good year for voter turn out only 50% of the 72% will bother to vote.

    The 27% that oppose the tax will most likely vote.

    So, if your keeping score, the pro-tax-the-rich folks have a 9% spread, in a good year, with high voter turn out to buffer themselves against right-wingers.

    In a bad year, when say 30% of the 72% will vote, i.e. 2010, you end up with a right-wing wave because 21.6% of the population, who favor Democratic ideas bothered to show up and vote, while the 27% that are right-wingers showed up.

    I don’t know why voter participation is so low, but until that changes, this country’s agenda will always be overrepresented of the folks, who actually go to the ballot box.

  55. 55.

    Catsy

    April 17, 2012 at 2:40 pm

    @Interrobang:

    I’m talking about the sort of middle-class dimwits like my folks, who seem to genuinely resent the money and effort we as a society have to spend to make sure we don’t have roving mobs of illiterate, desperate, diseased poor people everywhere.

    The concept of “the common good” is alien to this kind of conservative. It sounds too much like “communism”.

  56. 56.

    Catsy

    April 17, 2012 at 2:47 pm

    @gene108:

    I don’t know why voter participation is so low, but until that changes, this country’s agenda will always be overrepresented of the folks, who actually go to the ballot box.

    I am one of those people who thinks that voting needs to be not just a right but a mandatory legal obligation (for national races) with a federal holiday. Voter registration automatic and tied to a national database. You must at least cast a vote for Prez, VP, your Rep and Senators, penalty for noncompliance TBD.

    But such a law–or amendment–would never pass. Can you imagine the howls from the wingnuts about the “voting mandate”? Tyranny!

  57. 57.

    Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor

    April 17, 2012 at 3:16 pm

    @lou:

    Poor people are more likely to fill those churches, oddly enough. Keeping the rubes poor (and uneducated) is actually in the best interests of most churches.

  58. 58.

    gaz

    April 17, 2012 at 4:12 pm

    @Catsy:

    I am one of those people who thinks that voting needs to be not just a right but a mandatory legal obligation (for national races) with a federal holiday.

    Unless we resurrect a guest worker program, or otherwise reform our immigration system so that it doesn’t you know, suck, we’ll just be providing yet more reasons to deport brown folks.

    Not to mention, it’d be another justification for keeping tabs on our citizens. I’m not sure I’d trust that in the hands of the motley crew of authoritarian sociopaths we have in office. Not that this is Zimbabwe, but ummm, obligatory voting is not always compatible with a free society. The devil is in how it’s implemented.

    Edit: I’d prefer to see a tax incentive.

  59. 59.

    gaz

    April 17, 2012 at 4:28 pm

    @Catsy: Maybe you’re right on that point.

    I’m far too young to have lived through the zeitgeist of the day. I’ll never have my head truly in that. I was born while the peanut farmer was president. Buckley, Goldwater et al were pretty batty, IMO, and in the weeds politically, and Goldwater lost badly in ’64. That’s why I draw the comparison.

    In the end, I’m a fan of Paul Harvey, so I’m biased. He said “In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these.”. I happen to agree.

    I guess I’m inclined to want to find instances of history repeating itself. There’s not much if anything new under the sun, IMNSHO

  60. 60.

    Catsy

    April 17, 2012 at 5:07 pm

    @gaz:

    Unless we resurrect a guest worker program, or otherwise reform our immigration system so that it doesn’t you know, suck, we’ll just be providing yet more reasons to deport brown folks.

    It need not be. As you say, the devil’s in the details. I personally think we’re long overdue for a free national ID card; the insane state-by-state patchwork of methods we have for establishing our identity is just unsustainable for a country this size.

    Combine some kind of close-range smart chip with biometric ID. Make it universal. Subsidize it. States still make their own laws and standards for issuing driver’s licenses and the like, but they’re issued by adding a flag to the record called up by your card.

    It ceases to fuel issues of illegal immigration if you have to be a US citizen with a biometric smart ID card in order to be a registered voter. Votes are marked with your unique ID record. Votes that aren’t associated with a valid voter’s ID are thrown out. You couldn’t vote for a nonexistent voter without hacking the database to create a record for them, and a person couldn’t vote twice because it would be trivial to catch.

    Not to mention, it’d be another justification for keeping tabs on our citizens. I’m not sure I’d trust that in the hands of the motley crew of authoritarian sociopaths we have in office.

    I can’t really argue that, but on the whole I think the risks are outweighed by just how much damage is being done to our country and our democracy by 1) voter apathy and 2) voter suppression; the former is eliminated by compulsory voting and the latter is significantly mitigated by it.

  61. 61.

    Catsy

    April 17, 2012 at 5:11 pm

    @gaz: I wasn’t alive then either, but I’ve read about the JBS and as extreme as they are and were, I just don’t think they hold a candle to the modern GOP when it comes to anti-science, anti-reality and anti-democracy craziness.

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