Should Food Stamp Recipients Be Allowed...

This post was provoked by a poll online at The Blaze. After taking the poll here...

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/should-food-stamps-be-accepted-in-restaurants/

...you'll recognize the questions about which I'm writing at length, in context. (The poll is formatted to scroll up from what will eventually print as the bottom of a list of questions. The questions will not appear in the same order for the next person answering the poll.)

Should illegal aliens have access to food stamps? I say no. However, preventing illegal aliens from getting illegal food stamps should not be anyone's top priority. Elaborate, expensive investigations would waste more money than they'd save the food stamp program.

Have you ever needed to use food stamps? For able-bodied adults, the "need" for food stamps is always debatable. Let's just say that during the Nixon Administration, my father, whose job was handing out free third-and-fourth-rate food before the food stamp program was set up, wrote letters and signed petitions to the effect that poor people weren't even willing to carry some of the slop home and deserved to get some sort of vouchers to pay for normal human-quality food. When the food stamp program was set up, Dad's job became obsolete. So my family used food stamps for a while.

A certain amount of gaming was built into the system; by using a $1 food stamp to buy, say, a 25-cent carton of milk, I got 75 cents that could be spent on shampoo or notebook paper. So my brother and I were allowed to go into stores and make small purchases with food stamps. It was legal...and it's why I answered other questions, "No, food stamps should not be applicable to gas or personal hygiene products." Not directly. They've always been indirectly applicable to that kind of purchases; there's no need to expand an effect that was built into the system in 1974.

Do food stamp programs create dependence on government? They do. Because any income from work has to be reported and deducted, the system inherently creates incentives for beneficiaries not to take odd jobs or temporary jobs.

Are food stamp programs needed? Idealistically, they shouldn't be needed. In the real world, they are needed. Alternatives have been tried, and been worse.

Should the government give additional support for healthy food purchases? I say no, because what's "healthy" is actually a matter of balancing several factors that include individual genes. Whole-grain bread is a healthy food for most people. For me, it's worse than junkfood; it's poison. I, Priscilla King, have to remind my fellow blogger, Grandma Bonnie, about this constantly. One person's food is another person's poison. Please don't try to steer me in the direction of eating what you believe would be healthy for you.

Should we scrap the EBT card and return to paper coupons for food stamps? Yes. Even though paper is made from trees and should not be wasted, electronic transactions are even worse for the environment and also present a security risk.

Should the government periodically check eligibility of people receiving food stamps? Yes. This was built into the system in 1974. Recipients have to report their income and any changes in their financial situation. The original plan was that the government didn't waste time or money trying to verify what recipients reported, but did penalize people who were turned in for false reporting.

Should food stamps be limited to a parent and no more than two children? No. All children who are dependent on indigent parents are equally needy and must be offered equal benefits.

Should food stamp programs require recipients to provide some service in return? Yes. I've become especially passionate about this during the past year, because my income has been incredibly low and some welfare cheats have been frankly rude about it--"Why don't you sign up for food stamps like me?" I think all able-bodied adults receiving any kind of tax-funded benefits should be required to report to a public place during business hours, unless they are verifiably doing or applying for jobs, and make themselves available for any public or private work anyone is willing to let them do.

Should there be a time limit to how long a person can receive food stamps? I say no. I know imposing a time limit on food stamps has saved the country some money, but I'm not convinced that this is the part of the budget that most needs to be cut. Employers are less, not more, likely to hire someone who's been unemployed for ten years, so that person needs food stamps more, not less, than someone who became unemployed last week.

Should we do away with food stamps and have a food bank where you go and pick up your food? That was the system being tried when I was born, and it didn't work as well for anyone as the food stamp programs did.

Is there a provision in the Constitution that provides for the federal government to manage a food stamp program? No. On paper, the federal government could make a huge budget cut by transferring the management of all welfare programs back to the separate states. In practice, of course, implementing such a massive change would raise the total tax burden on each taxpayer...but it could be done. (Since I ganked these questions from a poll someone posted on Glenn Beck's blog, I might as well mention that brief consideration is given to this possibility in Broke.)

Should there be limits on what kinds of food can be purchased with food stamps? Several people have added variations on this question, on the poll; you can vote on specific kinds of limits. I say no limits. We don't really know what the optimal diet for anyone, even ourselves, would be, so we don't need to try to dictate what anyone should eat.

Should recipients of food stamps be required to use birth control? Aside from the genuine religious conflicts this would set up for some recipients...NO. One reason: some food stamp recipients are in fact able to practice abstinence, so offering them birth control devices would be wasteful. Another reason: birth control devices can present health risks for some people. Another reason: no birth control device is 100% effective. The person who asked this question needs to talk to some of his or her mother's friends and find out just how many of the people s/he knows were "surprise babies."

Should food stamps be used to buy name brands when store brands are just as healthy? Somebody works for a store whose store brands aren't doing too well, eh? I'll say this for store brands. I have temped in a snack factory where the name brand chips were fried in stale grease, after the store brand chips had been fried in fresh grease, because loyal purchasers of the name brand had become accustomed to that good old reused-grease flavor...so I do want to recommend trying store brands.

However, the fact is that most food manufacturers package the better products under the name labels, so often the store brand is not "just as healthy." The assumption that it is "just as healthy" comes from the false belief that all food that came from the same plant species is nutritionally identical. Reality is that foods lose nutrients, are subject to contamination, and in some cases ripen into conditions that make more nutrients available, hour by hour. So, even if the food product contains only a processed vegetable, salt,and water, the store brand may in fact be inferior. I think food stamp recipients should have the same right everyone else has to reject inferior food.

Should food stamp recipients' tax refunds be reabsorbed by the government to offset food stamp costs? Yes.

If food stamp recipients are caught selling or misusing food stamps, should they be required to pay back the cost of the food stamps misused? Yes.

Should government treat programs like food stamps as low-interest loans that must be paid back? I'd be interested in seeing experiments with this idea, but my guess is that the cost of trying to collect this money would outweigh the benefits of collecting it. Also, trying to collect the money would discourage food stamp recipients who might be able to go back to work.

Should government consider other living expenses when determining someone's eligibility for food stamps? From the clumsy wording of this question, I'm guessing that it was typed in by someone who didn't realize that his or her living expenses had been taken into consideration, and s/he still wasn't eligible. I think unavoidable expenses should continue to be considered.

Should working-age children of food stamp recipients be required to see (sic) gainful employment? I think they are, and should be, required to seek gainful employment. Most of them won't actually see it. That's the real problem in a nutshell. If U.S. corporations were required to make sure that food stamp recipients and their children would see gainful employment in their own communities, the food stamp program would shrink fast.

Should cell phones, cable/satellite TV, and drug testing be considered when determining someone's eligibility for food stamps? This is three separate questions. I think drug testing should be considered, and positive results for illegal drugs should be prosecuted as a crime. I think food stamps shouldn't be issued to people who are still paying for luxuries like cable TV. And I think cell phones should be considered as something already automatically issued to food stamp recipients in several categories--seniors who live alone, crime victims, people with various types of disabilities--for their personal safety.

Should there be grocery sections exclusively for food stamp use? No. I see no possible benefit in that.

Should food stamp recipients take a food nutrition course? Yes. That could be one of the things they do while they're presenting themselves for any possible employment.

Why not just allot a number of calories each month...Someone's idea of a joke. It's unfortunate, and it's ludicrous, that many food stamp recipients are Wide Loads. However, it's not always simply a matter of calories in and calories out. Some people become unemployed and qualify for food stamps because they have disease conditions, like hypothyroidism, that create ugly, unhealthy weight gain on a ridiculously low-calorie diet. Allotting a number of calories per food stamp recipient per month wouldn't necessarily affect the number of calories consumed, because most people live, shop, cook, and eat as families. And even when food stamp recipients themselves are counting calories, they don't necessarily lose weight.

Should tobacco addicts be allowed to use food stamps for tobacco? No.

Should food stamps be accepted in restaurants? No. However, restaurants should be allowed to designate times when unsold food will be discarded, and food stamp recipients should be allowed to collect unsold food while it's still in a salable condition...this might be the only way some people would get their fruit and vegetables.

Should food stamp recipients be subject to periodic "health & welfare" inspections? No. This is another idea that's been tried and found unhelpful. It wastes government time and money, offends and discourages welfare recipients, and generally just becomes another brick in the wall.

Have you used food stamps in the past year? Are you afraid that you might have to use food stamps in the next year? Neither. I'm not going to use food stamps while I'm able to work. If I'm able to work, but people so consistently refuse to pay for my work that I can't keep myself alive by my work, then that's a clear objective message from the universe that I've lived too long.

(More e-mail on this topic came in while I was writing this post. Here are two arguments:

http://news.yahoo.com/restaurant-meals-food-stamp-recipients-no-way-220200570.html

http://news.yahoo.com/americans-able-fast-food-purchases-using-food-stamps-181100828.html )

(Here's another one, also recommended: http://news.yahoo.com/food-stamps-fast-food-potential-abuse-everywhere-000900064.html.)