U.S. Rep. Robert Pittenger hung out for part of the day Wednesday at the Billy Graham Library, volunteering at a food drive for local food pantries.
- Wikipedia
- Pittenger
Pittenger has been a vocal supporter of food banks in the past, even helping develop a plan, along with CMS Superintendent Heath Morrison, to hold food drives at most local public schools.
Pittenger’s press release about Wednesday’s food drive quoted him as saying, “There shouldn’t be hungry kids in Charlotte.” I agree completely with that statement, and I’m glad the congressman took time to help local providers of food to the poor. But Pittenger’s PR-savvy food drive photo op shows a different side of the Republican lawmaker than we’re used to, and, frankly, I’m a little confused.
Specifically, I wonder why Pittenger didn’t translate his concern for the poor and hungry in his district into support for the most effective weapon Congress has in its anti-hunger arsenal: the food-stamp program. In September he voted in favor of sweeping “reforms” to the food-stamp program that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would cut around $40 billion in nutrition aid over 10 years and deny benefits to nearly four million people starting in 2014.
And need I remind readers that the GOP voted to slash the food-stamp program during the ongoing Great Recession? The brutal economic downturn, aka “Wall Street’s Golden Age,” has doubled food-stamp enrollment to 47 million, and, apparently unbeknown to GOP lawmakers, is still hitting the nation’s poor pretty hard.
The incredible “selling point” for the House GOP’s war on food stamps is that it’s a jobs measure. In other words, they based their legislation on old conservative bugaboos about “welfare queens” and parasitical bums who get food stamps because they’re too lazy to look for a job. Thus, the thinking goes, not being able to get food stamps will urge these social delinquents to get off their asses and become productive Americans, as God intended. The fatal flaw in that kind of “reasoning,” however, is that most beneficiaries of the food stamp program are children, the elderly and/or disabled.
So, Pittenger, good job helping out at the Billy Graham food drive. The next time food stamps come up, though, remember what you said about not having hungry children in Charlotte. We urge you to use the same sentiment to support an increase in food-stamp benefits. As Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, noted at the time of the GOP’s anti-food-stamps measure’s passage, “[This bill] guts nutrition for those most in need and says to the poor, to hungry children, to the disabled, seniors and our veterans, ‘You don’t matter, you are not worthy of our help.’ They deserve better.” Amen.
This article appears in Nov 6-12, 2013.
Grooms answers the question “What kind of asshole prefers taxation to charity?”
You’re all heart, Garth. Sadly, a typical Republican.
In the past, I have voted for mostly Republicans. But that was before they sold their soul to the NRA and the Christian Coalition. Enjoy your tea.
DLP, just as Republicans have Lincoln Day Dinners, the traditional Democratic feast is the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner.
Neither Jefferson nor Jackson provided food stamps. Indeed, Jefferson noted in his second inaugural address:
“The suppression of unnecessary offices, of useless establishments and expenses, enabled us to discontinue our internal taxes.”
From later in the address: “It may be the pleasure and pride of an American to ask, what farmer, what mechanic, what laborer, ever sees a tax-gatherer of the United States?”
So your party celebrates the man who eliminated all internal taxes and boasted of the lack of tax collectors. Yet you claim those who would endorse charity over taxation are “heartless”.
Garth:
In your us vs them mind, anyone who is not a Republican must be a Democrat. You are, as usual, wrong.
You are offended that you must pay taxes to help the poor. I am offended that I must pay taxes to maintain a monstrous size military, fight constant wars, and maintain huge agencies that spy on pretty much everyone.
Society is not a game of Monopoly where the game is over when one player has all the money.
Hey Archi, you’ve been reading my comments long enough to know I haven’t voted for a Republican for president in over 20 years. When is the last time you DIDN’T vote for the Democrat? And in the Democrat primary, did you vote for someone like Kucinich or Gravel, who at least were honest, or did you vote for one of the Goldman/Raytheon puppets BHO and HRC? Yeah, thought so.
You also know I’m against a “monstrous size (sic) military” and against the NSA. Still doesn’t keep you from trying to use pathetic guilt-by-association that you know is fraudulent.
I’m done with this thread – fuck any place where quoting Thomas Jefferson gets you “disliked”.