Individual states risk “punishment” if they fully fund food stamps, sidestepping the Trump administration’s decision to reduce the benefits during the government shutdown.
The threat came Saturday night, handed down by the Department of Agriculture, which administers the program.
You provide people the means to buy food and we’ll penalize you.
This is from the wealthiest country in the history of the world.
We have now entered a new realm of government, where the disadvantaged are further punished for their situations in life, not because their burdens are too heavy for the country to bear, but because of a sadistic motive to use them as political pawns to push Democrats to end the federal shutdown.
It appears to have worked.
And now we know how far the Trump administration is willing to go to get its way.
No jobs, no services, no lives are worth saving to reach their goal of utter dominion.
KANSAS is among the dozen-plus states that opted to fulfill its obligations to those who rely on SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
On Friday, the Kansas Department for Children and Families posted on its website recipients were to receive their stipends in full by the end of the day. About 86,000 Kansans depend on the relief, which comes to about $177 a month — just over $6 a day. Nationwide, about 42 million rely on food stamps to make ends meet.
Throughout the 41-day shutdown, Gov. Laura Kelly has maintained she would fight to keep the food benefits coming. In October, she signed the state onto a Democratic-led multi-state lawsuit against the Trump administration’s mandate that all SNAP funding stop beginning Nov. 1. In subsequent days, the administration walked that back to 50 percent and then 35 percent in funding cuts to the program.
