How do you squeeze the last dime out of a staving person? Elect a Republican:
Republican Gov. Tom Corbett has announced a major assault on the food stamp program that feeds 1.8 million Pennsylvanians, including 439,245 in Philadelphia. Pennsylvania’s Department of Public Welfare announced that on May 1, people under 60 with more than $2,000 in savings or other assets will be barred from receiving food stamps. People over 60 would have a $3,250 cap.
As the Inquirer points out in a detailed look, the move to cut food stamps is way out of line with what other states are doing: “Pennsylvania plans to make the amount of food stamps that people receive contingent on the assets they possess — an unexpected move that bucks national trends and places the commonwealth among a minority of states.”
The trend during the Great Recession, with millions falling into poverty, has been to remove such barriers to assistance. Gov. Ed Rendell eliminated the state’s asset test in 2008. Pennsylvania now joins 11 states with asset tests — including Indiana, Kansas, Missouri and South Dakota.
Eliminating “waste, fraud and abuse” is an old and recurrent refrain from those who seek to dismantle the country’s social welfare system. But it’s a cynical ruse: 30 percent of those eligible for food stamps in Pennsylvania don’t receive them. According to federal data, the Inquirer notes, Pennsylvania has a fraud rate of just one-tenth of 1 percent.
Conservatives frequently bristle at the idea that poor people might have nice things while receiving public assistance (“they have a television on welfare!”). But Pennsylvania will now create the most bizarre of disincentives: dissuading poor people from saving.
Don’t blame me. I voted for his crappy opponent.
Nor did I advocate not voting.
Nor did I lie and say there’s no difference between the parties.
Nor did I advocate voting “third party” as a “protest”.
If one cannot truthfully say all of those, then one is part of the problem.
You are missing one thing. I live in PA. I know what kind of campaign Onorato(Corbett’s oppoent) ran. Bob Casey’s 2006 campaign seems like President Obama’s 2008 campaign in comparison. Boo can tell you what a disaster Onorato ran(Better yet, who ran that disaster?). In a time of economic trouble all Onorato would say is that he’d clean up Harrisburg. Talk about a snoozer, among many other things. I guess the question is: why would the non-hardcore vote for an idiot that shows no interest in making their lives better?
what calvin said. Here in Philly, which makes up a huge chunk of the electorate, Onorato was a non-presence.
The PA Democratic party needs to be purged. They dropped the ball with Specter and Onorato, and have followed up that performance with an even worse play on re-districting. Now they are trying to fundraise off their own incompetence.
as for the non-hardcore PA voters, they heard “no tax increases” and we were off to the races.
Yeah, and now people are finding out about Corbett’s true slash-and-burn agenda.
Brendan:
You are missing one thing. The Philly party(cough Brady cough) isn’t much better.
I forgot one other thing. I volunteered for Sestak’s campaign in ’10. Guess how much the state and local Democratic parties coordinated their messages w/ Sestak’s campaign? Next to none, and it’s funny considering that .. that Sestak outperformed, by a lot, all other statewide Democrats in that election.
I was writing for the Philly Weekly in 2010, and routinely excoriated the PA democrats for choosing Specter on behalf of the base. It’s no wonder they lost in 2010, a retarded puppy could have seen that coming.
And yeah, no disagreement on the Philadelphia Democrats and their leader Bob “Barney Rubble” Brady. The dude is not anywhere near the sharpest knife in the drawer.
The GOP message to the masses on any issue is simply, “F*** you, you’re on your own.” They’ve been consistent in that message for as long as I can remember, and I don’t see the message changing any time soon.
Onorato’s campaign was pathetic, but I still voted for him.
Leave it to the GOP to kick the old and poor into the ditch.