On Wednesday afternoon, NBC reported that around 700,000 Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients would lose their benefits because of President Trump’s new policy. Libertarians and conservatives have long advocated for welfare reform, insisting that able-bodied young adults should not be rewarded for refusing to work, especially not with money stolen from innocent workers via taxation by politicians.
The devil is in the details
Despite what leftists are claiming, the new United States Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) policy will not throw anyone off of their benefits. In fact, the massive rule change is hardly even a change from current policy. As of today, individuals aged 18-49 with no disabilities and no dependents are required to work at least 20 hours a week for 3 months over a 36-month period in order to qualify for food stamps (officially called SNAP). However, some states have waived this ridiculously miniscule requirement, claiming that poor people cannot work a total of 240 hours over a three-year period, because there is zero work available in the US. The new rule would seemingly make it slightly more difficult for states to waive the tiny work requirement. The new rule would only allow states to waive the work requirement if unemployment were 6% or above. That’s all it does. And the welfare recipients have a lot of time to find work, as the rule is set to go into effect in April of 2020.
According to the USDA, 2.9 million recipients of food stamps are able-bodied and have zero dependents – and less than a million of them were working at all.
The new policy will give 700,000 people much needed motivation to work for their money.
“We need American workers and we want to restore the dignity of work for the American worker,” Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said of the policy change.
The reality is that there are millions of open jobs in the US. There are thousands in New Hampshire alone. Additionally, nothing justifies theft and redistribution of wealth, not even high unemployment numbers. Progressive socialists continue to use fear-mongering and emotional arguments as their primary methods as they have for decades, though. Democrats act emotional and claim that the sky is falling whenever legislators call out the rampant abuse of welfare.
Obama vs. Trump
Under president Obama, the workforce shrank and the welfare recipients grew. Some calculated that the increase in the number of food stamp recipients was from 32 million to 48 million – a whopping 50% increase! Some sources have reported a 70% increase in food stamp recipients in Obama’s first term. The labor force participation rate under Obama also shrank from 66% to 63%. Remember, Obama was the only president in US history to never see a GDP growth of 3% under his presidency. When Trump took office in 2017, less than two thirds of adults in the US were working. Interestingly, employment and job availability are phenomenal and the economy is booming now that the US has a president who is at least somewhat pro-freedom and pro-market.
Not far enough?
Many conservatives and libertarians believe that Trump and the USDA should have gone much further. They should have outright abolished SNAP, the entire USDA, and all of the 86 welfare (socialism) programs. It is never acceptable to steal money from people, even in order to redistribute it to those deemed to be ‘needy’ by politicians.
All the federal government is attempting to do is ‘enforce the law’. Don’t Democrats believe in enforcing the law?
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