The 2013 farm bill, that has recently passed a Senate vote, is expected to cut over $20 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) over the next 10 years. It is such an unnecessary mean-spirited ploy, that 26 members of Congress, all Democrats, have pledged to live off of food stamps for a week in protest of the SNAP cuts made by House Republican troglodytes. The protest–barely covered by the corporate media–illustrates just how massively important access to food stamps is to low-income families. Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT), who went a week living on less than five dollars a day, speaking about his experience indicated, “Well, I’m hungry. I’m hungry for five days. . . I got on the scale and found out that I lost six pounds in four days. It’s been eye-opening.”
Many Republicans argue that people on food stamps are lazy, undeserving of the bare sustenance food stamps provides for them and their families. One of these deluded hypocritical cretins is Rep. Stephen Fincher, a Republican and a farmer from Frog Jump, TN., cited the Bible to justify his stance on cutting billions from the food stamp fund: “For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.” Fincher is alluding to the notion that people on food stamps simply don’t or won’t work, but of course, he’s wrong by a country farm bill mile.
Yet, right wing corporate shills like Fincher have been receiving millions of dollars in farm subsidies. Using Agriculture Department data, researchers at the Environmental Working Group found that Fincher collected nearly $3.5 million in subsidies from 1999 to 2012.
In 2012 alone, Fincher received about $70,000 in direct payments, money that is given to farmers and farmland owners, even if they do not grow crops. Most of the agriculture subsidies go to the largest, most profitable farm operations in the country, i.e, these farmers have received $265 billion in direct payments and farm insurance subsidies since 1995. During debate on the farm bill in the House Committee last week, Fincher was one of the biggest proponents of the $20 billion cut to food stamps in the legislation, and this was when he quoted passages from the Bible in support of his seriously un-Christian like sociopathology. The potential damage of these cuts will be very real. Take food out of the mouths of babies, and stick it instead into the gaping maw of morbidly fat corporations. What a great idea!