Ah that “old-fashioned term” – groceries. A relic really. It harkens back to a time when people filled a bag with the items they needed to sustain themselves and their families.
Once the president of the United States realized that nobody knew the word anymore – even after a whirlwind global campaign to reacquaint society with the term – it must’ve been easy for Speaker Johnson, congressional Republicans and the wealth class that owns them, to convince the president that people don’t need groceries anymore.
I mean, if nobody knows what groceries are, how can they miss them? “Outta sight outta mind, am I right?”
Sound nutty to you? Think about it.
POTUS just traveled halfway around the world to a country with a multitude of cultural differences, including remarkable culinary elegances and when he got there, he ate prepared burgers from a paper sack. This despite some pretty high recommendations on the grub over there. Even world-famous chef and – at times – harsh societal critic, Anthony Bourdain, thought the food in Saudi Arabia provided an “entry point for cultural understanding.”
And while folks all across the middle-eastern kingdom regularly grab groceries and whip up food fit for, well, fit for a king – no such thing for POTUS. Nope, the Saudis knew that ingredients combined at home and set on a plate were artifacts of the past to the out-of-touch plutocrat. In a nod to Trump’s understanding of where food comes from – the royal court brought in a McDonald’s food truck.
Once the Saudi court jester – no longer on loan from the U.S. – returned to Washington, he rejoined his colleagues on the hill who were elbows deep in his “big, beautiful bill” and the destruction of SNAP (formerly known as food stamps), or as Trump would call it, the obsolete notion of groceries for the working poor.
Funny thing about SNAP, it can’t be used for prepared food. Sure, a person can buy ground beef, cheese, and a bun but they can’t get a Quarter Pounder. No wonder Trump doesn’t know he’s heralding the further privation of 3.2 million Americans – a third of whom are children.
You might have noticed that I pointed out that the “big, beautiful bill” will hurt your neighbors (or you) who are the working poor. That’s because SNAP already has work requirements.
See, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program was constructed by former President Bill Clinton and his old buddy from across the aisle, John Kasich, a U.S. representative from Ohio at the time.
At the turn of the last century, those two evil geniuses jumped on the absurdly popular (and racist) mythology of the welfare queen. The good old boys restructured food stamps and included a phased-in work requirement.
I say phased-in because the insistence on employment for nutritional help didn’t go into effect nationwide until 20 years after the bill passed. You have to give those guys credit, they were smart enough to get out of Washington before the real pain hit in all the blue and purple states that hadn’t already forced poor people to perform for their supper.
Red state legislatures had attached work strings almost immediately so there was no change there.
Joke was on Bill in the end though, because poor people lost their food assistance the exact year that Hillary was the Democrats’ nominee for president.
If you’re paying close attention to hunger in America, you noticed that the Covid SNAP supplemental increases disappeared under Biden. If Trump has taught us anything, it’s that hungry voters discard their leaders.
Even a couple of war criminals like Bush and Cheney knew that a hungry electorate was unruly. They shrewdly expanded food assistance just before they invaded Iraq.
If the Senate passes the “big, beautiful bill”, one can only hope that an angry and hungry America remembers to exact their vengeance at the ballot box.
In the meantime, there’s gonna be a lot of pain. Pain for kids. Pain for the disabled. Pain for the elderly. Pain for farmers and the U.S. workforce. Plenty of pain to go around.
And while the current Republican establishment is looking to limit Medicaid with work requirements – after gutting it financially first – they had to work extra hard to make SNAP even more unattainable.
Never let it be said that the Republicans under Trump aren’t up for a contemptible, cruelty challenge. Whether the pain they cause is a result of sycophantic and blind obedience to wealthy political donors – or whether the cruelty is the point – I’ve witnessed the results of their shenanigans plenty of times.
I was running a homeless shelter in 2016 when the first food assistance work requirements went into effect. Sure, we had people too weak and infirm to work, but they were also too weak and infirm to jump through the hoops and qualify for waivers.
One woman had such a debilitating mental illness that she didn’t know she was mentally ill – so she refused to apply for disability. See, the Clinton/Kasich deal was: no disability designation, no food. Get a job or starve!
READ: How Trump’s ‘One, Big, Beautiful’ Tax Bill Could Impact Programs for Women and Children
Luckily for her, our solution at the shelter was to create a job for her. Oh, sure she applied for employment in other places. She was always looking for work – remember she didn’t think there was anything wrong with her. But the people who interviewed her ran the other way when she started talking to people who weren’t there.
That poor old lady washed the bedding and towels for our shelter – and thus preserved her meager $86 per month in food stamps (aka SNAP).
At the same time, families in the shelter who struggled to survive could at least get credit for all the mouths they tried to eat when the federally mandated work requirements went into effect. And have you seen a 12-year-old eat? Hungry all the time!
Well, let’s hope those kids haven’t gotten addicted to eating. Under the “big, beautiful bill” – only the children seven years of age and younger will count towards a family’s food assistance when the parent can’t find work. Let that eight-year-old, and everyone else in the house, get their own damn groceries!
But wait – talk about timing – just last week South Dakota Rep. Dusty Johnson introduced a bill to start the process of relaxing child labor laws.
Heck if the Republicans succeed in eliminating youth work restrictions, and that eight-year-old’s tall enough to reach the fryolator, maybe they can get a job at a McDonalds and do her part to feed her president’s insatiable appetite – for Big Macs and for cruelty.
