This month, the Beltway’s business-as-usual types went bonkers after House Republicans separated food stamps from the farm bill. For years, Congress had included food stamps in its ag bill so that rural and urban districts would each get something — at public expense, naturally.
The idea behind separating the food-stamp program into its own bill was to force the guardians of the public purse (that would be our legislators) to debate the merits of food stamps on their own. Today, food stamps cost taxpayers upward of $80 billion a year, to the point where one out of every seven Americans is receiving them. The numbers are rising faster than our ability to pay for them.
Recent Post dispatches help indicate why food stamps need a much closer look. Last week this paper reported how food-stamp recipients in the city’s Caribbean neighborhoods are known to buy groceries with their Electronic Benefit Transfer cards and fill them up in huge barrels that they ship to family members abroad. Today, The Post reports that food isn’t just being sent to hungry friends abroad: Some food stamp purchases are being resold by profiteers.
After The Post’s initial news report, Democratic Assemblyman Michael Cusick called the practice “a blatant abuse of the welfare system.” What he didn’t say is that it’s the kind of example that makes the House Republicans’ strategic decision to force a debate on food stamps look even wiser.
No one begrudges assisting Americans who need relief, or even the poor of other countries. Last fiscal year, for example, American taxpayers sent $522.7 million in foreign aid to the Caribbean. That generosity is even greater during emergencies — as America showed during the Haiti earthquake, the Indonesian tsunami, the Japanese nuclear disaster and so on.
But the food-stamp program is meant to serve American families in need. And when some individuals can afford to buy $40 barrels and ship them abroad for an additional $70, the hard-working folks whose taxes pay for this food might reasonably wonder whether certain benefits need to be curtailed.
We don’t pretend to have all the answers on food stamps. But we do know that the taxpayers deserve a full and honest debate — and ought to be suspicious of politicians working to prevent one.