In another installment from the Economy as Morality Play Department, we have Gov. Pence making the moral case for cutting food stamps.
The Indiana Family and Social Services Administration announced last month that beginning in 2015, it would no longer request a waiver to the federal work requirement for certain people who use the SNAP program. Up to 65,000 single Hoosiers could lose food stamp benefits unless they are working 20 hours a week or attending job training.
Asked about whether this action targets poor people, Gov. Pence responded “I’m someone that believes there’s nothing more ennobling to a person than a job[.]” The article, however, reminds us that “there were 2 million people in the Midwest seeking jobs, but only about a million jobs available. And that’s not counting the thousands of people who are no longer counted as unemployed because they gave up looking for a job.”
Not to put too fine a point on it, the assumption here is that poor people need food stamps because they’re lazy and only if they have to choose between work and starvation will they get off their butts and get a job. That assumption is not, by and large, based on evidence. My sense is that people who cling to this world view do so in large part because it’s scary to acknowledge that the world is often uncontrollable and unfair; that you can be willing to work and still go hungry.
Don’t underestimate the need to feel superior–lots of folks I know firmly believe that luck had nothing to do with what they have, it was all their own merit and they deserve to have more than “those people.”
I am beginning to view all of Pence’s actions through the lens of “using government to drive more people to faith-based organizations”.
I had the humbling experience this past spring, summer and fall, to grow produce in my garden and take it to a local food pantry. People patiently and politely wait in a line and when it is their turn they go through the aisles and choose limited amounts of food. “You can have one of those and two of those, etc.” The shelves, and especially the produce coolers, were sometimes nearly bare. Folks can only come to the food pantry once every 30 days, so finding fresh produce is not a given. People were most appreciative of the fresh produce when I brought it in. I don’t think I had any hidden agenda, just acting from gratitude that I had enough nutritious food to share with hungry people and the feeling I got from seeing their surprise and delight. I do think the current governor has an agenda and in time it will be expressed.
Pence’s position is not so surprising. I just wonder when the people of this state will start voting in the interests of the common good, but when they do that, then I will be surprised. Meanwhile, this governor needs to be ennobled and put out of office so he can look for another job, because he clearly does not understand that it is his job to govern in the interests of the common good. We live in such a dark time because the ones who govern don’t know it.
I remember a panel discussion that included a woman who told how her family — I think a widowed mother with young children — was getting “welfare” in (possibly) the 1940s or 50s and the case worker came to their house for the usual in-home visit which required a list of where the money had gone, and how their mother was then castigated by the case worker in front of the children for spending a nickel per child for an ice cream cone. As a middle-aged woman she still burned with shame and resentment as she recalled the experience. Where is compassion, or at the least, “there but for the grace of God…” when dealing with the poor?
I agree with most of the comments above. It always amazes me how such people justify their decisions about the poor. Most of the one’s I saw had issues that either prevented them from working or they were working two part time job’s and still
didn’t have enough to cover their expenses. Some worked full-time but made seven dollars an hour- not much to raise four people on.
I just wonder how many people in this state have to become poor and financially vulnerable, yet not be eligible for food stamps or other help, before they decide that Pence and others like him are serving their ideologies, not the public. At what point does a passive public become angry and decide to change the players peacefully? And at what point does the anger take on a more violent tone?
I wonder why Pence did use the line from “The Outlaw Josey Wales.” Chief Dan George’s character recalled when the chiefs went to Washington and met government officials. “Endeavor to Persevere.” That sounds pretty ennobling.
“Ennobling”? Who talks like that? Most would say something about picking up one’s bootstraps and pulling on them (while wearing the boots, picture that…if one has boots.).
I volunteer at the ASPCA. Many people come in Saturday morning for food and supplies for their pets. I cannot see how denying these folks this aid, forcing them to abandon their pets, would somehow enouble them. It would, however, cause much suffering to the innocents. I went to law school with this shit heel. I wish I had kicked his ass when I had the chance.
I’m a little unclear on how watching your kids suffer, get sick and starve lends to your greater dignity or character.
Frankly, Carlito, I wish I had been there to watch you kick, but I think somebody beat you to it, because the contents of his lower intestine are in his head.
One positive thing: Indiana doesn’t have a defense budget. That’s where the money would go that he’s saving.
Good posts, Stuart. Watching children suffer builds moral character.In Sociopaths.
That sort of ideology has a pretty obvious dead end, UNLESS someone out there can give us a rational, databased argument for a strong connection between watching children starve and “ennoblement”. There are lots of data to show otherwise, but I just don’t think it’s worth arguing, considering the source.
Actually, Pence’s comment only demonstrates the need for another election with a breathing opponent.
I recall reading that before the New Deal, the leading causes of death for the elderly were hypothermia and starvation. Life was great in Paul Ryan land.
I have a strongbox with the paper work from the mid-1950s when my grandfather died. He and my grandmother worked all their lives. She died first and then he left this earth with less than $500 in his “accounts”. His “estate” consisted of a list of furniture items and a lawn mower. If not for the New Deal, yes, he easily would have starved. BTW, his sons were able to do better, my dad being a college grad and mid-level white collar corporate bureaucrat and his brother being a West Point grad and worked in the post-WWII diplomatic service, so it’s not like my grandparents were ne’er-do-wells.
They sound pretty ennobled, Mary. I suspect Pence might use this (leaving out the New Deal, of course) in his presidential stump speeches.
Oh, he’ll be “ennobling” Hoosiers, all right. The question is, which ones?
Fuck Mike Pence and his neo-feudal dreams.