Food stamp families to critics: Walk in our shoes .

[tosh]

AP via WSJ: http://online.wsj.com/article/AP36912ac989e74d07affab1a865281e7e.html

Some have advanced degrees and remember middle-class lives. Some work selling lingerie or building websites. They are white, black and Hispanic, young and old, homeowners and homeless. What they have in common: They're all on food stamps.

As the food stamp program has become an issue in the Republican presidential primary, with candidates seeking to tie President Barack Obama to the program's record numbers, The Associated Press interviewed recipients across the country and found many who wished that critics would spend some time in their shoes.

Most said they never expected to need food stamps, but the Great Recession, which wiped out millions of jobs, left them no choice. Some struggled with the idea of taking a handout; others saw it as their due, earned through years of working steady jobs. They yearn to get back to receiving a paycheck that will make food stamps unnecessary.

"I could never have comprehended being on food stamps," said Christopher Jenks, who became homeless in his hometown of Minneapolis-St. Paul after a successful career in sales and marketing.

More at: http://online.wsj.com/article/AP36912ac989e74d07affab1a865281e7e.html

[KamaAina]

1. It isn't just the unemployed

I just learned that one of our employees here in the high-cost Bay Area is on food stamps. And we strive hard not to be like Sprawl-Mart.

[Justice wanted]

2. I know people at work who make $100 too much each month to get food stamps BUT

that hundred dollars isn't enough to buy food.


This country is freakin messed up.

[ejpoeta]

6. we were $200 over for food stamps. We HAD family health plus

with two of the 3 kids on medicaid and one on child health plus. We got booted off the medicaid and so did the two kids. Em is still on child health plus. Have to apply for the younger two to be on child health plus too. Bob has switched jobs now though and gets paid more.... but can't afford insurance still....

Funny thing is that we are better off than a lot of other people. We don't have a house payment. Yet we still can't afford health insurance.

[Justice wanted]

7. It is very sad. I feel for your family. I don't know how my hubby and I get by and it is just the

two of us. We can't imagine how people do it with kids.

[ejpoeta]

8. WEll, I stay home. I make a lot of stuff myself.

Limit eating out. We killed the satellite a year ago this past november. Have internet streaming through a roku and netflix and hulu plus. We have one vehicle. My husband had a company vehicle and they paid for gas. This new job he will be getting his vehicle through them soon (i hope) and get's reimbursed for mileage. He even has gotten per diem for going to training plus pay. We have taken tax refunds and paid down bills. That's how we got our house paid off. We burn wood in an outdoor burner. We have worked hard to cut costs. And I have been also doing couponing to save money.

This is the good life for us. WE have been far worse off than this before. Try to remember that whenever we get down. Also I have sisters that give us clothes for the kids. All of our kids are around the same age and we pass them around.

[gratuitous]

3. Keep talking, folks

There's this nasty little myth that people on food stamps are . . . you know, not like Newt (*wink!*), and no, I'm not talking about former Speakers of the House who resigned in disgrace.

Of all the things my tax dollars go toward, I'd far rather that some (or more) goes for food stamps than for a host of other expenditures I could name. As long as we have our priorities as fucked up as we do, at the very least, there should be assistance for people so they don't starve.

[tosh]

4. Food stamps and housing subsidies

are two of my favorites. They are a lifeline in my community so I see their value daily.

[Louisiana1976]

5. K&R!