75-01-A1
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Food Stamps[edit]
Transcript[edit]If you're under the impression that federal food stamps are available only to the elderly and the poor, you're in for a surprise. I'll be right back. If you've had the experience of standing in the checkout line at the supermarket next to a strapping young fella with a big basket of groceries who pays for them with food stamps and you're worrying how long you'll be able to find the cash to feed your family after you've paid your taxes, you've probably wondered about the food stamp program and how it works. You're not alone. Plenty of other taxpayers are beginning to ask the same questions, and with good reason. One irate father called me from another state last year. He makes a hundred thousand dollars a year. "Why," he demanded to know, "was my state government providing his son with food stamps while a young man was going to college." In California, well, the fact is under present federal regulations, a full-time student living away from home can have food stamps at the taxpayer's expense even if his father earns a million dollars a year. One young woman in California took just enough college courses to avoid the food stamp work requirement. She was studying to be a witch. There's no minimum age for food stamp recipients either. In California last year a special task force investigating the program found cases where 14 year olds ran away from home and lived in communes, on food stamps. Even strikers are eligible, which takes the government out of its traditional role of being neutral in labor disputes and puts it in the position of subsidizing strikes. Obviously something's wrong. Food stamps began in 1964 as a plan for distributing agricultural surpluses to the needy. Fewer than 400,000 persons received the stamps. Today, 13 million get them, that's an increase of 3150 percent in 10 years. We've long since used up that agricultural surplus. In fact, today our problem's one of shortages, but according to a recent Congressional report, in another two years sixty million Americans, one out of every four, will be receiving food stamps at the expense of the other three. Like some other government programs that grew out of our compassion for the needy, food stamps have gone out of control. In a nation that's taken pride in self-reliance for 200 years we're actually encouraging able-bodied young men and women to go on the dole. Yet the food stamp program was never intended to subsidize college students and teenage runaways. Some politicians react to every attempted welfare reform as if it were an attack on poor people, closing their eyes to the reality that such programs become less efficient the older and bigger they get. There hasn't been a government program yet that couldn't benefit from periodic review and reform. That task force I mentioned came back with a long list of food stamp abuses, thefts, red tape, and counterfeiting, all of which added up to a hefty chunk of the annual four billion dollar bill the taxpayers pay for food stamps. They made 32 recommendations to tighten eligibility, improve security and streamline the program. In California, we adopted what reforms we could last year. But food stamps are a federal program, so most of the changes will have to be made in Washington. They could begin by moving this welfare program, for that's what it is, from the Department of Agriculture, where it now takes one-third of the department's budget, to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare where it belongs. Will Congress do anything about this mess? Well maybe, that's up to you. A group of Congressmen, calling themselves the Steering Committee, have studied that task force report into preparing corrective legislation. whether it passes will depend a lot on whether enough taxpayers tell their Congressman just how they feel about a program that's supposed to help the needy, but which actually redistributes the taxpayers earnings to subsidize a lot of people who just rather not bother earning the money themselves. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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