The President Is Perfectly Fine If You Starve

Donald Trump speaks during an event about drug prices on Nov in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington Photo Evan Vucci AP Photo For the second time in a decade Washington has shut itself down in a budget standoff and ordinary Americans are quite literally paying the price As of this writing the federal authorities is in its second month of a shutdown and million Americans who rely on food stamps got nothing on November the first time in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Activity s -year history that benefits have been fully halted Think about that Millions of families woke up hungry because politicians in Washington couldn t do their jobs It s nuts After constituents pleas of desperation and multiple court orders the Trump administration was forced to turn the food back on but it s now appealing that ruling whiplashing Americans facing acute scarcity and economic anxiety We ve started to accept these crises as routine like a new season of chosen twisted reality show With each episode the fatigue and fury of being used as political pawns only deepens But this shutdown is different in a way For the first time in modern American history its leader is intentionally starving his own people In the United States federal shutdowns have become de facto political theater a reckless meeting of chicken that recurs with grim regularity Since Congress has triggered funding gaps resulting in full or partial shutdowns with the longest stretching days What was once unthinkable has become almost seasonal Autumn rolls around and Americans brace for the familiar countdown to chaos Will our representatives fund the administration or take it hostage The current saga began like so a multitude of before it a clash of priorities and a collapse of governance House Republicans pushed their budget cuts that would imperil wellbeing care Senate Democrats insisted they would only vote to pass a budget that extended tax credits on strength care and reversed Medicaid cuts Republicans lack the needed majority to have their way and refuse to compromise with Democrats Neither would blink so on October the lights went out Offices shuttered Hundreds of thousands of federal workers were sent home or ordered to work without pay Lawmakers gave floor speeches and media soundbites and went to politicking But behind the grandstanding real families promptly began to hurt For the first time in modern American history its leader is intentionally starving his own people To countless on Capitol Hill this is all just part of the show A shutdown is treated as a leverage move a stunt to amount ideological points or appease extremist donors In one senator read Dr Seuss on the Senate floor during a shutdown as if it were storytime instead of a national dilemma In then-President Donald Trump quipped that unpaid federal workers should encourage his shutdown tactics while his commerce secretary mused that he didn t understand why unpaid workers were visiting food banks at all These people behind mahogany desks don t feel the flames they fan They still draw their salaries yes members of Congress still get paid during a shutdown while a janitor or a park ranger loses theirs The disconnect would be darkly funny if it weren t so brutal From the comfort of cushy offices political strategists are already gaming out the next confrontation like it s a chess match No group of Americans has been more cynically weaponized in this standoff than those who depend on SNAP This isn t particular fringe handout it s the nation s largest anti-hunger effort serving working-poor families children seniors and people with disabilities Shutting down the administration has put these Americans directly in the crosshairs When November arrived nearly million people who count on SNAP to eat were described there was no money for food assistance Despite access to a billion exigency fund that the Trump administration refused to disburse the project for the first time ever only stopped Food aid rapidly became a bargaining chip to extract concessions Trump back in office and seemingly emboldened by chaos outright threatened hungry Americans on social media declaring that benefits will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up leadership and not before In other words We ll let your children starve until we get our way Trump is using food as a weapon and he s hardly hiding it Democratic leaders for their part tried a symbolic move to fund SNAP during the shutdown only to be blocked by the Republican Senate majority who accused them of political stunt-making Kids and families are not poker chips or hostages Democratic Sen Jeff Merkley declared decrying the unbelievably cruel reality that food aid was being held hostage by political games Unbelievably cruel indeed To be absolutely clear Republicans are holding Democrats to a dark arrangement Give up extended healthcare care tax credits and preserve Trump s Medicaid cuts or watch the poorest Americans go hungry That people in a country this rich require such advocacy is an outrage in itself and the development of decades of bipartisan governing that has harmed the poor At food pantries across the country the lines began swelling almost instantly Food banks from New York to Texas saw surging demand as low-income households and even furloughed federal workers scrambled to fill the void States like New York hustled to release exigency funds and charities begged for donations to stave off mass hunger The stopgaps will feed a few but they can t possibly replace SNAP s reach A federal court ordered the Department of Agriculture to draw on contingency funds to ensure SNAP benefits are paid in November but the ruling only provides a temporary remedy not a long-term response to the operation s broader funding predicament It s pure absurdity We live in one of the wealthiest countries on Earth yet our leaders have engineered a method where millions can be cut off from food overnight as a negotiation tactic That people in a country this rich require such help is an outrage in itself and the consequence of decades of bipartisan governing that has harmed the poor Related The Housing Hunger Games Our executive has spent years subsidizing corporations that pay poverty wages while providing just enough aid to keep workers afloat and then they freeze that critical aid Republicans and Democrats alike have failed to tackle the chronic issues of increased costs of rent housing food and curative care perpetually kicking the can down the road and placing ever-widening swaths of Americans at threat Mega-employers like Walmart pay notoriously low wages that leave employees reliant on inhabitants assistance in fact Walmart s low-paid workers cost taxpayers an estimated billion a year in food stamps Medicaid and other help It s a vicious cycle Our policies prop up working poverty with programs like SNAP effectively incentivizing companies to keep wages down Both parties haven t done enough to keep people off the brink but one party right now is pushing people off it We ve set the stage so that millions of Americans are one missed check away from hunger then we dangle that over their heads for political gain As one grandmother in Tennessee put it when she heard her in monthly food stamps might not come I don t know what I ll do There s nothing abstract about a mother skipping meals so her kids can eat or a disabled veteran quietly rationing canned soup because his country won t keep its doors open Time is of the essence when it comes to hunger lawyers for food aid recipients reminded a federal judge urging immediate intervention The cruelty goes further In this shutdown even WIC the scheme for women infants and children teetered on the brink Nearly million mothers and young kids who rely on WIC for baby formula and basic nutrition were at exposure of being cut off Only a last-ditch shuffle of funds raiding an Agriculture Department tariff revenue stash kept WIC afloat for a minimal weeks But SNAP got no such rescue The administration flatly refused to tap the same pool to cover food stamps calling it unacceptable to shift billion from other child nutrition programs In other words they argued feeding hungry families would steal from schoolchildren s lunches a false choice created entirely by their own refusal to govern Related House Republicans Want to Ban Universal Free School Lunches Meanwhile the president s allies in Congress insisted there was no reason to fund SNAP in isolation if Democrats longed to feed people they should just surrender and reopen the establishment on Republican terms Hunger in their view is leverage In one GOP state senator even claimed that he had yet to meet a person in his state who is hungry as he voted to block free school meals Another Republican quipped that maybe a missed meal would motivate the unemployed to get a job Time after time the GOP has made it citizens through framework and dialect its disdain for America s working poor Now the message is loud and clear a little starvation is acceptable collateral damage in function of the agenda Step back and behold the full dystopia of this moment We have a cabinet that periodically sabotages itself We have partisan warlords so entrenched in their battle that they re willing to withhold food from their own citizens to win full control of the state machinery The GOP s long-term project isn t just to shrink executive it s to break it to erode American s faith that their cabinet can or should serve the common good How did we the people become the hostages We have surpluses and wealth in this country beyond imagination yet million tons of American soybeans sat unsold at one point as a end of contract war tariffs food rotting in silos because of political machinations while children in this same country go to bed hungry How did basic governance get twisted into a hostage dilemma How did we the people become the hostages Each shutdown each manufactured situation chips away at whatever trust remains in our institutions The karmic cost of this dysfunction is incalculable For a growing number of Americans the idea that the ruling body can solve problems or serve the masses good is dying out replaced by nihilism and anger And perhaps that s the point for specific of the perpetrators Break faith in regime then point to the wreckage and say See it doesn t work It s a cynical self-fulfilling prophecy As this nightmare of a shutdown drags on one can t help but feel that our democracy is at a precipice A ruling body that repeatedly holds its own people hostage will eventually lose those people s hearts We are tired bone-tired of the political arsonists and their endless theater The real test of patriotism now isn t in the Capitol s rhetoric it s in the character of the nation s people And if there s any hope to be detected it s in those everyday patriots with grumbling stomachs and unwavering resolve They remind us that America is not its lawmakers America is its people And if the people can somehow endure this abuse and still help each other through it then maybe just maybe this house won t burn down absolutely The post The President Is Perfectly Fine If You Starve appeared first on The Intercept