We are American businesses, and we are not amused.
It was one thing to be forced by some pencil-necked liberal governors to run our operations at half-capacity (or worse, shutting down altogether for practically a year). But there wasn’t much we could do about that, with so many states stupidly putting their citizens’ health and lives over our profits. So OK, we played their little game for a while. That slick bullshit about how “essential” workers were at places like Amazon, Home Depot and WalMart was pretty funny, wasn’t it?. Yeah, they sure were “essential” all right — essential to keep us out of total bankruptcy, thank you very much. Our yachts in the Caribbean thank you for your service.
But enough is enough. Time to go to back to work, kids. Pandemic’s over. What, you don’t want to show up for $7.25 an hour? Hell, we’ll be generous and throw in an extra hundred bucks to start. We’ll call it a signing bonus. Not enough? You’re kidding, right? You want $15 an hour now? You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me. Don’t make me call the governor. Don’t make me call my Republican state legislator. Oops, too late, you made me do it, you ungrateful slackers!
See that? All it took was a phone call and poof! There went your extra unemployment aid. Don’t like it? Well you can always try voting them out (Good luck getting your vote counted, we’re working on that one right now!).
So really people, in all seriousness, WTF? Now that we’ve cut off your unemployment, where the hell are you? I still can’t staff my Widget McWidget factory. I still can’t find wait staff for my famous national restaurant chain. Guess it’s time to call my GOP stooges in the legislature again and raise some hell! Well, look at this! My buddies at ALEC have a great idea—how’s about we just cut off your food?
As reported by Laura Reiley, writing for the Washington Post:
States around the country are attempting to make it harder for needy families to access federal food-assistance programs.
Republican lawmakers in Ohio, Arizona, Arkansas, Missouri, Montana and others have proposed more restrictive policies to qualify for food assistance, cutting off benefits to those who have saved a little money or who drive a halfway decent car, or adding paperwork requirements to document tiny changes in income and efforts to find work.
As Reiley observes, according to the latest Census data about 20 million adults in this country as of June 7 reported that their households didn’t have enough to eat. Despite the efforts of President Biden and Democrats in Congress who in March essentially forced through COVID-19 relief legislation with no Republican support to provide further food assistance to families as the pandemic began to slowly wane, those benefits are starting to run out.
But Republicans in states under their control are saying no more—we’re done. They say the problem isn’t food, it’s that these people just don’t want to come back to work. And they’ve whipped out out some careful research to back up their claims:
“There are many unfilled job openings out there, and to the extent that any program holds people back from seeking employment, that’s something states want to counteract,” said Angela Rachidi, a Rowe scholar in poverty studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. “There is evidence to suggest that SNAP reduces employment. And during the pandemic [the USDA] allowed flexibility in long-standing integrity measures, so it’s perfectly appropriate for states to reintroduce those now.”
Leaving aside the inherent biases of someone who conducts “poverty studies” for the American Enterprise Institute, the “evidence” Ms. Rachidi (apparently) cites is from a 2011 study which has little if any relevance in an economy only now beginning to shrug off a year and a half of compulsory hibernation, where childcare centers, for example have not even begun to re-open at capacity.
But apparently facts don’t matter when you’re on the receiving end of fierce complaints from your corporate donors about how it’s taking so much time to re-establish those profit margins.
As Reiley reports:
Republicans nationwide have been criticizing unemployment insurance and benefits such as SNAP, saying they are causing labor market difficulties and providing an incentive for Americans to stay home and avoid returning to work.
The “idea,” as Reiley describes it, is “by removing the safety net,” i.e., cutting off SNAP and other food benefits to people, it will essentially force them to come back like good little farm animals to their troughs. So Republican legislators in Ohio, for example, have inserted little poison pellets in their state budgets, adding onerous paperwork requirements and setting thresholds in which people receiving SNAP must report increases in income of as little as $500, and provisions cutting off benefits if they have a car worth more than $4650, or have the princely sum of $2250 in total savings.
That’s it. Drive a $4000 car and you lose your right to food benefits for your kids. Because that makes you rich! Left unmentioned, of course, is the fact that anyone who is driving a car worth only $4000 is likely to see car repair bills in the near future that will likely drain those massive “savings” in an instant. Reiley quotes a Republican Ohio legislator named Tim Schaeffer who hides behind the time-tested Republican excuse for all cuts in benefits to low-income Americans: rooting out “wasteful fraud,” of course. This from a party that gave millionaires a two trillion dollar tax cut.
Other GOP-led states are requiring proof of child support payments be proffered by women who are claiming benefits, as if obtaining child support in a pandemic from absent, unemployed fathers was a matter of flipping a switch for most women. Nevermind trying to find a family court that doesn’t have a mile-long backlog right now.
As Reiley points out, these cookie-cutter provisions being implemented at the state level are being drafted by “right-wing advocacy groups such as the Foundation of Government Accountability or American Legislative Exchange Council.”
But we already knew that. Because if there’s one group of people that truly doesn’t want to work, it would be Republican legislators.
Cutting off people’s food is just the latest in a string of heinous efforts by Republicans to satisfy their business and corporate constituents by blaming workers for the fact that businesses can’t find workers willing to work for slave wages. It appears they’ll try anything to force people back to work except actually raising wages.
So here’s a novel thought for you business owners to chew on: if you can’t afford to pay workers a decent wage, maybe your business doesn’t deserve to exist in the first place.
Heresy, I know.
No comments:
Post a Comment