{"id":14598,"date":"2015-01-26T11:50:32","date_gmt":"2015-01-26T19:50:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=14598"},"modified":"2015-01-26T11:50:32","modified_gmt":"2015-01-26T19:50:32","slug":"the-republican-response-to-hunger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/26\/the-republican-response-to-hunger\/","title":{"rendered":"The Republican Response to Hunger"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve had many years to learn the Republican response to illness.  It\u2019s the RepubliCare Death Benefit.  Those who cannot pay for care get to die free.  The Republican response to hunger is very similar.  With the elections safely past, Republican governors, like Paul LePage (R-ME) are celebrating their victories by kicking citizens off SNAP,<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"0126lepage\"<\/p>\n

More than 6,000 people in Maine have been kicked off the food stamp rolls<\/a> since October, according to an investigation by local CBS affiliate WGME. Maine is one of a handful of states to make food assistance harder to get, and the cut-offs offer a preview of how safety net opponents around the country are planning to knock about a million Americans off of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) next year.<\/p>\n

Gov. Paul LePage (R) decided last year to prematurely reinstate tougher eligibility rules requiring food stamps recipients to work. The state agency that maintains SNAP in Maine launched the change in October, and reports that 6,500 of the state\u2019s roughly 215,000 SNAP beneficiaries had been booted from the program as of the end of 2014, WGME\u2019s investigation found. <\/p>\n

A Maine official portrayed the decision as \u201ccomplying with federal requirements\u201d in an interview with the station, but the federal government offered to waive those requirements for Maine and 36 other states back in May<\/a>. In those 37 states, economic conditions are so bad that the federal government invited state officials to suspend the work requirement that usually applies to able-bodied adults without dependents who want SNAP benefits. When the economy is healthy and jobs are plentiful, a person with no disability and no one to look after must demonstrate that they are working or in job training at least 20 hours a week in order to get food stamps for more than 90 days in any three-year period. If economic conditions are dire, though, federal officials allow state administrators to waive the work rules for SNAP\u2026 <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Think Progress<\/a>><\/p>\n

Of course Republicans are trying to blame the feds.  But the Obama Administration has waived that requirement.  The reason is simple.  Every penny the federal government spends feeding hungry people is a penny Republicans can\u2019t spend on welfare for billionaires.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve had many years to learn the Republican response to illness.  It\u2019s the RepubliCare Death Benefit.  Those who cannot pay for care get to die free.  The Republican response to hunger is very similar.  With the elections safely past, Republican governors, like Paul LePage (R-ME) are celebrating their victories by kicking citizens off SNAP, More […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14598\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}