ThinkProgress points to a recent speech by Rep. Steve King (R-IA) where he assailed new nutritional standards in schools. King complains that there are parents coming up to him telling him their kids are starving:
He said parents have approached him and have said things like ai???My kids are starving in school.Ai??My kids are being rationed on calories.”
Whatever one’s opinion is about the nutritional standards, it’s hard to take King’s words about child food safety seriously. In July, the congressman moved along with many of his Republican colleagues aggressively to cut food stamps. These cuts would’ve withheld as much as aid for 2 million Americans. He tried to justify these cuts with the following fear mongering:
ai???I know there are people that can’t do anything about it in the short term, but we also know that there are many more that are gaming the system, and we know that these EBT cards are being sold at a discount and traded off for alcohol and tobacco and illegal drugs.”
So if King is willing to push for huge cuts to food stamps, he’s probably not concerned about child hunger. So why all the fighting against nutritional standards? It could be that two of his top ten donors are the crop and agricultural services industries, which specialize in pumping high-fructose corn syrup and other unhealthy products into Americans’ diets.
Rep. King is just your typical republican bi business lackey. Obviously, he spouts the racist , bigoted republican policies towards those who are not rich, old, white guys. (I’m an old white guy BUT; i’m NOT rich enough OR WHITE ENOUGH for the republicans to care about). Again , as usual, King abuses those who are in need, especially children!!! He seems to think that somehow punishing children will stop “those people” from “gaming the system”as he puts it. No doubt, a few people game the system but so do King and Romney on their income taxes!!!! My understanding is that IA is predominantly white and in King’s alternative, delusional universe white people don’t game the system,aren’t on Medicaid, or welfare, or need free school lunches or breakfasts. So it is pretty obvious he is talking about people of color. This just another “dog whistle” to the racist, bigoted republicans. IT IS A SHAME THAT IN AMERICA we have people like him and his cronies in Congress
Oh Harry, you with your generalized far left liberal spiel about “typical racist bigot Republican” rant. I love the “abuses the children” part too. Real cute. Being from Iowa, I can tell you that you’re so far off base, it’s clear that you are an old white guy with an old white liberal mentality that the GOP is out stuff it’s own pockets and take the form of some cartoon caricature from a 19th century newspaper. Apparently, you have no idea what this bill represents. The same calorie intake is across the board, whether you’re a 100 lb sting bean or a 300 defensive line back. The only thing that Michelle Obama’s little law does is give kids more of a reason to bring their own lunch or leave the school for lunch, thus hurting the public schools funding. It’s one thing to try to enforce healthy eating, it’s another to limit rations like we don’t have the resources to go around.
As far as King’s comment on EBT cards? He is absolutely 100% right. I put myself through college working at a grocery store, before the EBT cards were introduced, people used the food stamps and countless would buy products that went slightly over a dollar point, thus giving them the most amount of change back. They would follow this up multiple times until they accumulated enough money to buy cigarettes or liquor. It would normally average out to around 30% of the government assisting they received. That’s absurd. Now while this wasn’t everyone, I would say that one in four people would attempt this, over the course of 4 years I worked there. When the switch to EBT happened, I got a lot of people who would pull similar stunts. The problem is, it’s not being monitored thoroughly, and if the government doesn’t want to step up, by providing a safer more secure means of assistance, then the government is not doing it’s job. It’s not fair to throw money at something that is so poorly regulated.
This rant was brought to you by a Moderate Liberal from Des Moines.