Declaring war on the poor

Poor people just aren’t receiving any respect these days. Gone are the days when thousands marched on Washington, D.C., in as part of a campaign for economic justice for the poor. That was 1968. Fifty years later, we have insincere populist rhetoric from politicians while those same leaders pursue policies that directly damage the working people whose votes they seek.

Now, the latest insult from President Donald Trump, the man who pledged to remember America’s forgotten people, a proposal to fundamentally alter our food stamps program. His budget further calls for cutting the program by $213 billion over 10 years.

Called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, it allows recipients to choose the food they want. They buy fresh produce, meat, fish and other groceries, shopping with their electronic benefit transfer cards at local stores. That would change under Trump’s proposal. Instead, many beneficiaries would have half their benefits replaced by a box of groceries chosen not by themselves, but by the government.

Yes, the party that thought Michelle Obama growing vegetables in a White House garden and increasing whole grains in school lunches intruded upon personal choice now wants to pick the food that poor people eat.

The Department of Agriculture calls this radical change to food stamps America’s Harvest Box. It would involve some 81 percent of households receiving SNAP benefits. People needing food would receive nonperishable foods — boxes of pasta, canned goods and peanut butter (oh, but those peanut allergies!).

It’s unclear how the food would be delivered and by whom. Already, this administration has failed at delivering meals to hurricane-damaged Puerto Rico. We can have little faith that it successfully would be able to get food to millions of people, some homeless, others who move often. We can just see the trucks driving out to the remote Navajo reservation with food, while people drive miles down dirt roads to try and pick up their boxes. Or boxes left at a city apartment doorstep, only to be stolen. This would add a whole other layer of bureaucracy to one of the best safety nets America has for our neighbors in need.

The proposal fails on many other levels than just logistics. With the EBT cards, SNAP users can’t be picked out in a crowd. They swipe their cards just as all shoppers use a debit or credit card. That’s much less embarrassing than having to pay with food stamps as shoppers once did. Food boxes would mark families as individuals as people who need help, and that can be embarrassing.

Currently, beneficiaries pick their food their family members will eat, food they like and that suits their tastes. Considering how different food tastes can be, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to build boxes filled with items that recipients across the country will want to eat. The potential for waste is huge.

What’s more, it is unlikely that boxes stuffed with nonperishable foods actually would be healthy. Think of the salt in canned goods or in other processed foods. The boxes wouldn’t have fresh fruits or vegetables, either. Many people can’t eat nuts, or gluten. How would these preselected boxes handle the many food allergies or restrictions people face?

The New Yorker, with its usual insight, writes that the food box program is a window on how the Trump administration sees poor people. Sasha Abramsky points out that Congress likely will kill the idea but goes on to say, “… even if the proposal is just a fantasy, how telling it is that America’s leaders fantasize in such detail about punishing the poor for being poor.”

America’s harvest? More like America’s shame, this rich nation that keeps looking for ways to make it harder to be poor.