That little they have shall be taken away
Trump, sniffing the air for more people to harm, has found them: welfare recipients.
President Donald Trump said Monday his administration will start to consider reforming the welfare system in the United States, saying that some people are “taking advantage of the system.”
The comment comes as the Trump administration struggles to get any sweeping legislation through Congress, despite Republicans controlling both the House and Senate. Trump failed to pass health care reform earlier this year and is currently working — without much success so far — to pass tax reform.
Trump was never trying to pass health care reform – he was trying to destroy the ACA’s attempt at providing health insurance for everyone. That’s not reform; it’s nihilism. Trump wants poor people and middling people (not poor but far from rich) to be unable to get health insurance, because it’s too expensive.
“People are taking advantage of the system and then other people aren’t receiving what they really need to live and we think it is very unfair to them,” said Trump, flanked by Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson during a Cabinet meeting. “Because some people are really taking advantage of our system from that standpoint.”
Nah. He doesn’t care about those other people who “aren’t receiving what they really need to live” – he just wants to take it away.
“We are going to be looking very, very strongly, therefore, at welfare reform,” Trump added.
How do you look at something “strongly”? Let alone “very, very strongly”? His vocabulary is so exiguous that he has to fall back on that idiot repetition.
Welfare reform was not something Trump emphasized on the campaign trail, but his first budget proposal — unveiled earlier this year — proposed sweeping cuts to food stamps and welfare programs by restricting those who are eligible for such programs.
See? He just wants more people to go without. It makes him happy. I bet he thinks about it while he’s eating his two scoops of ice cream (and his guests are eating their one).
As someone who has been on food stamps in the past, I can attest that they are not being overly generous, and that it is not particularly easy to get lots of stuff on them. The process to get food stamps is humiliating and dehumanizing, and giving them at grocery stores piles on the humiliation because everyone sees you have food stamps, and even cashiers are often snooty about food stamps (though many of them may be on food stamps themselves; it may be a way of dealing with their own feelings of being dehumanized).
Welfare itself was “reformed” in the Clinton years to such a degree that if people are taking advantage of it, they are not doing it for long, since it has a life-time limit of five years. And I was unable to get welfare, because I would not drop out of my master’s program to take the first minimum wage job offered (at which time I would have lost the welfare, and any chance at ever making more). They were offering me $55 a month, when my total yearly income was $5000. I had a teenage son, or they wouldn’t have offered that. But I had to spend 10 hours every week looking for work (which I was willing to do) and I couldn’t tell them there were any particular schedules I couldn’t work because of school (which I was not willing to do) and I had to take the first thing that was offered, no matter how little it paid, or whether I had to leave school (which I was not willing to do). In short, work for less and less if you want us to prop you up even for a couple of years until you find some pathetic job that won’t support you no matter what – oh, and we’re not going to give you enough to make it worth that, either.
This country is notoriously ungenerous, and Trump means to make it even less so. This drives people to churches and other places, where the dance of humiliation continues. Yes, I ended up at a church food bank. I was luckier than some, as I was not actively proselytized or made to pray for my food basket; I could discard the Bible that was in it, but I was not able to discard the dehumanization of being condescended to, even in such a nice, nice way. (By the way, I deeply dislike people who call me “dear” or “sweetie” and that was the norm there). I also had to give away half of what was in my food basket, because I am not able to eat green beans, and that was about all they gave in the way of vegetables. Fortunately, my sister got almost nothing but peas, which she detested, and was willing to trade.
Sorry for the personal rant, but…damn, I hate Trump. People who don’t have much to begin with because of people like him exploiting their labor to enrich themselves, and he wants to remove even the small, humiliating life line they have left. I’m betting he thinks that most of the people on welfare are people of color, and immigrants. He’d be surprised. But, he doesn’t really care about poor white folks either, in spite of a few noises that way from time to time, if he thinks it will get him cheers.
Dramatization of similar state of welfare in U.K. in recent film “I, Daniel Blake”.
I saw “I, Daniel Blake”. It was…painful.
I’m not sure how to read this. Is Trump being unwittingly honest about his friends taking advantage at the expense of the poor, or are the poor taking advantage at the expense of the rich who really need to have all the money before they can live happily?
Taking advantage of the system? Doesn’t he look in the mirror at least once a day?
‘Tax reform’ is a disgusting euphemism. Can we agree not to let it slide?
As I’ve said before, Trump has so little self-awareness he doesn’t realise that the fat old man in the magic window is himself.
He’d call a 50 year old ‘old’.
He’d call a 20 year-old ‘too old’ if that 20 year-old were female.