A troubling Bloomberg piece (shared by Yahoo) says the Trump administration is set to do away with a provision that allowed most states to automatically enroll welfare recipients for food stamps, a move that will lead to more than 3 million poor households losing their food stamps. This is especially troubling given the fact that the Trump administration not only enjoys record Evangelical support but also recently gave extremely generous tax cuts to the wealthiest of Americans, some of whom have recently confessed to some sections of the media that they don’t even know what to do with the extra money–the quintessential war on poverty. As expected, several 2020 presidential candidates have already jumped on this issue.
Trump gave a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the Top 1% but now wants to endanger 3 million people by cutting their food stamps.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) July 23, 2019
We need a government that works for everyone, not one that serves the rich and attacks the poor. https://t.co/bXLNo2zxUH
As it currently stands most states automatically enroll people who qualify for other federally funded welfare programs into food stamps, and rightfully so. In most states for example, people who qualify for federal housing are also automatically enrolled for food stamps. It is this “automatic enrollment” by states that is at issue, with the Trump administration moving to put an end to it. The argument by the Trump administration is that automatic enrollment is leading to a lot of people getting food stamps even though they don’t meet the federal qualification standards. This they argue, is wasteful and you guessed it–a strain on the national debt. Yeah, the same Trump administration which vigorously pushed for deficit-busting tax cuts for the rich is now worried about food stamps for the poor.
Bottom line folks, valid policy differences arise between fiscal conservatives and economic liberals all the time and a forceful argument can be made that the Trump administration is perfectly within its rights to move in and streamline the criteria for determining who qualifies for food stamps. The problem for the Trump administration however and the record number of Evangelical Christians who support it is that it is very hard to defend a policy that strips millions of poor families of food stamps because of worries about the national debt when just recently you supported a trillion dollar tax cut for the wealthiest Americans knowing full well it would put a huge dent on the national debt. This is the epitome of either cruelty, greed, or both
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