I grew up on Section 8 housing, food stamps, welfare, and dealing with social services. I never had a Christmas. I never had a birthday.
I live in a working-class community that is struggling at the poverty line, where people who work full-time jobs still at my corner bodega use food stamps. Do you think they care what the stock market's doing today or what the GDP number is? No.
Barack Obama seems intent on enrolling more people on food stamps. Mitt Romney's focus is going to be on generating more jobs that will make food-stamps unnecessary for them.
I think the idea that giant profitable corporations should pay their workers enough so that they don't need food stamps - since when is that left-wing? How did that become 'leftie?' That doesn't seem leftie to me. That seems common sense.
Sure, food stamps are occasionally misused, but anyone familiar with business knows that the abuse of food subsidies is far greater in the corporate suite. Every time an executive wines and dines a hot date on the corporate dime, the average taxpayer helps foot the bill.
Conservatives are, I think, correct to highlight family stability as a fundamental issue that goes to the welfare of children as much as food stamps or anything else.
I was always the new kid in school, I'm the kid from a broken family, I'm the kid who had no dad showing up at the father-son stuff, I'm the kid that was using food stamps at the grocery store.
Nobody wants to be on food stamps, but when my family lost everything, we were grateful for it. I was grateful the program was there so I could concentrate on my schoolwork and not on my empty belly. We were grateful that we had the support we needed to roll up our sleeves and rebuild our lives.
Food Stamps helped keep me from going hungry, and Pell grants helped me go to college.
When you create an economy where you subsidize corporate profits through a welfare program and food stamps in order to keep wages low in some perverse pursuit of 'competiveness,' than you reap the fruits of the anger that you sow.
And if you look at the reality in the United States, where you have more than 40 million people below the poverty line and 42 million on food stamps, and then you look at poverty around the world, clearly the way we're running the engine of capitalism is not serving us well.
Should Americans take care of their brothers and sisters? Absolutely. We all have an obligation as individuals to care for the poor. And, yes, there is a role for government and even food stamps in this equation.
Food stamps are an investment in our future.
Why not add benefits for making healthy food choices, provide a transition bonus for getting off food stamps, or increase job training opportunities and income - raising minimum wage?
The eligibility for food stamps has widened and widened; welfare has been widened - unemployment insurance and disability insurance. These are all incentives not to work.
We had to get on food stamps for a short period of time, so I understand the need for those.
To this day, the only argument against Obama that critics can seem to come up with involves admitting he's better than them - though they certainly season it with some racism. You know, he's that lucky black man who actually appeals to the populace. He's that elitist who got himself off food stamps and into Harvard.
Civilization as it is known today could not have evolved, nor can it survive, without an adequate food supply.
The female of the genus homo is economically dependent on the male. He is her food supply.
Our budget works to reduce and eliminate the risk of attacks at our ports, rails, in the skies, our food supply and roads by allowing for increases in many of the programs and agencies to help protect these important areas of commerce and travel.
