Grace Ross: Hunger Programs–Let’s Not Be Mean Or Stupid
Tuesday, May 07, 2013
What if I told you that there was a federal program that had been proven consistently for 30 years or more to be the best stimulus program–dollar for dollar–that the federal government has ever instituted? It’s not only far better than tax breaks (those don’t help stimulus much), but this investment is far better stimulus even than infrastructure projects; politicians accurately tout those but they’re not as effective.
It turns out that money put directly into the hands of those who must spend it immediately, spend it overwhelmingly locally and that specifically benefits our farmers is the best stimulus money there is. Moody’s Investor Services, a business-oriented not-exactly-your-radical institution, it is their economists that have shown consistently for some 30 years that food stamps is the best economic stimulus that we have.
Yet, now, when all we hear is bellyaching about how the government doesn’t have money and how anemic the economy is and how desperately they need to balance the federal budget, $20 billion is on the chopping block from the best stimulus program we’ve got.
Not only that, hunger is actually rapidly increasing in the US. Roughly 15 percent of US households struggles with having enough food on the table, which means a significant percentage of those folks aren’t even managing it. The impact on things like children’s ability to study in school has been documented across the world when there are issues around hunger. Not only is the food stamp program the best stimulus programs, it’s one of the best consistent investments we can make in the next generation and their ability to learn and even in terms of their health and development. Nutrition issues for pregnant women have lasting health implications for the entire life of children that they give birth to. Not ensuring access to enough food may be the most expensive mistake for a society.
So why, one might ask, would we cut food stamps and child nutrition programs? Its the worst economic choice and it’s bad for a slew of social reasons. There can be no excuse for it.
We spent time talking to some of the 40,000 folks who participated in the annual Walk for Hunger this past weekend. It is an amazing sight to see, another clear example of the power of community in our state against the backdrop of the recent bombings.
The vast majority thanked us–I even got a few ‘God bless you’s'.
But even a few of the people who put aside–often annually–the time to raise pledge money and then walk 20 miles in the Walk for Hunger, had wild misconceptions about food stamps. Food stamps can only be spent on food, not on alcohol and cigarettes.
Happily I was struck by the wisdom of this gentlemen who stopped for a moment and then corrected himself and pointed out that: “in times that are this bad, there’s no excuse for being mean.”
Of course, he is right. Because if we are really concerned about the loss of money to our government because of fraud, we’d learn the practical facts and institute them. It is well established that the most common fraud that regular people make on the government is lying on their taxes. Those lies, that fraud costs more money than the entire food stamp and child nutrition programs combined! So if the real concern is about the folks defrauding our government and each other and hurting government revenues we would not be worrying about food stamps; we would be worrying about tax evasion.
Since cutting food stamps hurts our farmers, our businesses, our economy, families, children, the future of our economy, clearly the only reason to do it is if we are even more committed to being mean than smart and practical. Perhaps the acknowledgement that hunger is on the rise, that we need to do something to stop it while supplementing our local businesses and farms more in need now than usual will help be a wake up call. We need a clarion call to wake those in the federal government who would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Grace Ross is a former Gubernatorial candidate and author of Main St. Smarts.
Related Articles
- Grace Ross: Guaranteeing Corporate Profitably
- Grace Ross: Flu Is Not The Only Thing Making So Many Sick
- Grace Ross: Time To Retrofit Our Economy
- Grace Ross: Governor - Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back
- Grace Ross: We Reach Redemption Together
- Grace Ross: It Really Does Take a Village
- Grace Ross: To Slot Or Not To Slot
- Grace Ross: Keystone XL Pipeline Provides Needed Gas, Jobs - Not!
- Grace Ross: A New Year’s Resolution for the Nation
- Grace Ross: Local Control Matters
- Grace Ross: Adaptation Can Be Deadly
- Grace Ross: Despite Large Turnout, Politicians Still Ignoring the Voters
- Grace Ross: Fixing Government: That Would Be Nice!
Follow us on Pinterest Google + Facebook Twitter See It Read It