79-12-B7

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Food Stamps

Transcript Energy and SALT II seem to be all that is concerning Washington these days, but that isn't true. Any number of special interest axes are being ground and the sieve through which our tax dollars are leaked away is being passed from hand to hand in the marble halls of government. Those halls, it is true, are resounding with the usual rhetoric about cutting budgets, fighting inflation and all the other things that became fashionable after California's Proposition 13 passed. But let's pay heed to "what they do, not what they say." For instance, we should be more than a little concerned about what is being done to the food stamp program. Now food stamps are supposed to be an additional help to those who might not be able to afford a nutritional diet for themselves. And none of us want anyone in this land to go hungry. Food stamps exchangeable for groceries in the marketplace came into being in the '60s. They were free to some and purchasable by others, depending on income, but the cost could not exceed thirty percent of their value. And of course there were strict rules that food stamps could be used only to purchase staple foods. Remember that point please, because in a moment I'll refer back to it. In 1965 there were less than half a million people receiving or buying food stamps and the budget for them was thirty-five million dollars. By 1977 there were fifteen million recipients and a budget of 5.6 billion dollars. There were also charges of extensive fraud. Official figures suggested at least three million recipients were ineligible. Congress declared the need for reform of the runaway program was imperative. So they reformed it. And what do you know? They made it easier to get food stamps and they made them entirely free; there would no longer be any charge for them. Opponents of this kind of reform were thrown a fish to quiet their protests-- a ceiling of a little over six billion dollars was put on the budget for fiscal 1979. And, oh yes! There would be tighter certification of eligibility to crack down on fraud. The bureaucrats over at the Department of Agriculture put the cancellation of any charge for the stamps into effect immediately. It took them several months to get around to any of the provisions about tighter eligibility. Now this fifteen million recipients have become nineteen million, and the estimate for this year is that another three-and-a-half million will be added. And that six billion dollar ceiling is now over seven billion dollars. There is also a projection that the program is 650 million dollars in the red--so the White House is telling Congress they'll have to lift the ceiling or there will be a cutback which will result in hardships for the truly needy. This is an old welfare trick; a form of blackmail in which the elderly and infirm are held as hostages to extort more money from Congress. All of this came from a supposed reform. I told you I'd refer back to the rule that food stamps can only be used to purchase food. In Missouri there is a theatre which runs mainly "X" rated pornographic films. Its lighted marquis reads "We accept food stamps."		Details Batch Number 79-12-B7 Production Date 08/??/1979 Book/Page RPtV-470 Audio Youtube? No
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