Republicans Think People Aren't Entitled to Food

[Content Note: Food insecurity; class warfare.]

Earlier this year, a recession-era boost in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) benefits was allowed to expire, because the economy is perfect and everyone is doing great. Just ask any Romney. They'll tell you. I mean, if we were still in a recession, who could afford a fifth mansion with a secret room? Case closed, your honor.

Granted, millions of USians, many of whom are working full-time in foodservice or retail jobs for corporations that refuse to pay their staff liveable wages and are allowed to get away with that bullshit because the federal minimum wage is a cruel joke, are dependent on food stamps in order to survive, but members of the Republican Congressional Caucus just literally pretend that this reality does not exist while they talk endless shit about "makers and takers" and "producers and parasites" and people who will never "take personal responsibility and care for their lives," while themselves living extremely well off the taxpayer dime and governing on behalf of the insatiably avaricious tycoons who shamelessly exploit an unfettered capitalist system to create the permanent underclass that toils in their service, the very existence of which the Republican Party insistently denies.

Every single thing conservatives (generally) believe about privilege, opportunity, hard work, compensation, and the social safety net is wrong. They govern from a place of wrongness that acts in service to plutocrats and denies the lived experiences and needs of the most economically vulnerable citizens and residents of the nation, from a place of wrongness that is unfathomably cruel.

And, as a result, today, food stamp benefits will be cut by $5 billion (= 20 Romneys), leaving millions of families with a reduction in benefits.

Enrollment in food stamps, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, has soared.

Some 47.6 million people, or nearly 15% of the population, get them, according to September federal data. That compares to 26.3 million, or 8.7% of the population, in 2007. The average benefit per person is $133.19 a month.

The bitter irony is listening to Republicans hollering about the Affordable Care Act and the cost of healthcare. Not for nothing, assholes, but first item on the Keep Healthcare Costs Down checklist is making sure that your populace has enough nutritional food to fucking eat to stay healthy.

Needless to say, many of the millions of people who are suffering from "food insecurity," the euphemistically named catch-all that includes everything from the occasional missed meal to constant hunger to malnutrition to outright starvation, are children. Members of the United States Congress are okay with letting children starve. Members of the United States Congress think children aren't entitled to food.

(Many of them children born into the world only because those same members of Congress also believe women and other people with uteri aren't entitled to bodily agency and access to abortion, especially on the government dime.)

There aren't words to convey the depth of my contempt for a party whose official position on hungry children is essentially: "Sucks to be you, kid. You shoulda been born a Romney."