Food Stamps: Junk Food or Crab legs?

MoonHowler

Food stamps brings out a host of resentments from those not on food stamps. People seem to resent luxury items such as crab legs even more than they resent poor people using food stamps to buy junk food.

Huffingtonpost.com:

WASHINGTON — More Americans are annoyed by the idea of food stamp recipients using their benefits to buy expensive food than their using them to buy junk food, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll.

According to the survey, 54 percent of Americans think people should not be allowed to use food stamps to buy expensive items such as crab legs, while only 32 percent said that they should be allowed to do so.

By contrast, respondents were split on allowing those on food stamps to buy junk food, like potato chips, candy and soda. Forty-five percent said they should be allowed to buy those items and 42 percent said they should not.

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MO GOP attempts to remove steak and fish from SNAP card choices

MoonHowler

loaves and fishes

Apparently there will be no fishes and loaves for Missouri’s poor.  Lawmakers have decided to tinker and chisel away at what food stamp recipients can  and cannot purchase with their SNAP cards.  According to Washingtonpost.com:

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,” Jason 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.”

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