Quote:
Originally Posted by MothBalls
I'd like to correct you on this. I personally know a few people who used the WIC program. To qualify you have to have children between the ages of 0-5. It was intended to provide nutritional foods to children during their important development years. It's not like food stamps or welfare, and it only provides nutritional foods. The products that can be purchased or provided by WIC are basically milk, juices, and fruits and vegetables, etc. It's a worthwhile program.
Of course with any Government run program there may be some abuses, but for those who actually need it, it's one of the better ones we have.
And yes there are many hungry families and children in the US. That's a sore sport for many, including me. At the same time we are spending literally billions to help the rest of the world, our own people are going hungry. I've seen it with my own eyes. It pisses me off to no end.
|
Where to start. One, I was arguing against the bogus notion that one in seven (or whatever they say) Americans are hungry. That's rubbish. Are there some hungry? Sure. Is the number even remotely close to what they claim? No. Based on their stats, basically 50% of the people in the US who are NOT obese are "hungry." Do you really think that that is true? Look around, you think 50% of the people who are not tubs of goo are
poor? Odd considering that the poor are more likely to be obese in the US.
Two, no one with internet access, or cable TV, or any other luxuries can really complain they cannot afford food. I'm fine with some programs to help little kids, but they need to make damn sure the family is not using the aid to allow them to spend money on other things that are not required to live. My dad was a little kid during the Depression. They handed down shoes from kid to kid (and clothes, etc). They were
actually poor. I guarantee they were not spending $50 (in constant 2011 dollars, obviously) per month on whatever the possible equivalent of the net might have been. When I was growing up we were pretty well off, and we didn't have cable, my parents thought it was a waste of money, we went outside and played.
I checked, and the rules for WIC are an income of $40,793 a year or less for a family of 4. The average US income is ~48k. This program is hardly for the
poor.
As for the little kids needing food... why have kids when you cannot feed them? Having kids is after all a
choice (birth control is
substantially less expensive than kids).
The reason stuff like this is on the table to cut is that no one has the balls to cut the 3 programs that really need to be cut (
slashed, actually): Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
As far as I am concerned they should set the total budget to whatever last year's revenues were, and cut
everything weighted to its % of last year's budget. If something was 31% of last year's budget, then 31% of the cuts required to 100% balance the budget should come from that program.
Seems like when they are asking for cash, or when they are trying to stir up support, they always use the "food insecurity" numbers. Turns out that anyone who during the past year had "the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods" is in the food insecure pile. Note that "nutritionally adequate" means that if some month they bought too much junk food, they are "food insecure." The % who are actually hungry (“the uneasy or painful sensation caused by a lack of food.” (their definition)) according to the USDA is ~3.5%. Note that this is a pretty lousy metric, seems like a clinical diagnosis of malnutrition should apply—some fat kid without a lunchbox full of twinkies has a "uneasy or painful sensation caused by a lack of food.” How they feel shouldn't matter, it should be a simple matter of comparing their height to a chart of how many calories they get.
Anyway, cut the major budget problems, and this little program won't even notice the cut it deserves (some fraction of a % reduction is like it's "share" to be cut).
I had a friend at Treasury who worked on the EBT cards because the fraud rates were so huge. Dunno if they ever addressed the problem completely.