By giving it all to the banks in service fees:

Kansas welfare recipients will be unable to get more than $25 per day in benefits under a new law sent this week to Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s desk by the state legislature. The bill also prohibits welfare recipients from spending their benefits at certain types of businesses, including liquor stores, fortune tellers, swimming pools and cruise ships. “We’re trying to make sure those benefits are used the way they were intended,” state Rep. Michael O’Donnell (R) said, according to the Topeka Capital-Journal. “This is about prosperity. This is about having a great life.” Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, often known as “welfare,” is one of several federal programs administered by states at the ground level. The Kansas TANF program, known locally as the Successful Families Program, offers a family of three as much as $429 per month in cash benefits. Kansas is one of at least 37 states that distributes benefits on government-issued debit cards, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Under the new rule, a three-person family receiving the maximum benefit would have to go to the ATM more than a dozen times to get the full benefit, which would be whittled away by an 85 cent fee for each withdrawal after the first one. And the local cruise liner ATM will no longer be an option.

The other thing that this does is make it absolutely fucking impossible for these families to plan ahead. One of the ways to make dollars stretch is by buying in bulk. When I was an undergrad, I was living on a monthly stipend from my GI Bill and Army College Fund of 500 bucks a month as well as my monthly National Guard check (which at the time for a Sergeant was about 150 a drill weekend), plus I had two jobs (one as a bouncer and one at a clothing store) and I also did drywall/painting, and landscaping. Since my tuition was paid because I lived in a state that paid your tuition to a state run college if you were in their National Guard, I was basically very well off. Between that and lacrosse practice and games, the only thing I was short on was time, but I still seemed to have plenty of that to get myself into trouble.

Having said all that, I still would basically only go grocery shopping once a month, and I would go to several grocery stores and pick up whatever bulk items they had on sale. I would pick up a 10lb roll of ground beef and then go home and form burger patties out of it and put them in individual ziploc bags. I would find lasagne noodles and other ingredients cheap and I would make a lasagne, let it cool, and then put it in individual portions in tupperware bags. I asked my parents for a meat sicer for Christmas my sophomore year to help. After Thanksgiving, I would buy two frozen turkeys for dirt cheap, cook one, make a hot dinner the first night, slice up all the sliceable meat and preserve it, cut the odds off and use it to make chicken salad for sandwiches, save the bones and skin in the freezer and then with a couple dollars of fresh vegetables and 50 cents worth of rice from the everpresent 10lb bag of rice, make a big pot of soup and feed not only myself, but my roommates. I’d buy a ham after easter marked down and cut up the rest for sandwiches, save the bone and some meat and with some carrots and dried beans make a hearty soup. Ground pork on sale? No problem. Season it, put it in ziploc bags, and now you have sausage patties for breakfast. Canned green beans or corn on sale for 20 cents a can, I’d buy my weight in it. Canned tomatoes on sale for 30 cents a can- sauce for a month. A block of cheese is WAY cheaper and better than those individually wrapped slices, so I would get a block and slice it up as needed. I’d buy big restaurant sized mustard, and ketchup jars and put them in smaller squeeze bottles for use. And so on.

I didn’t have a car, so I would just take both of my duffle bags empty on the bus, hit the stores, stuff them full of everything, strap one to my front and one to my bag like we did with our A and B bags when the sirens were going off in Fulda, and hump them home. And I didn’t even have to carry the .50 cal barrels. I figure I ate like a king for less than 150 bucks a month back then. But it took a lot of work, it took planning and coupon clipping and watching for sales, and most of all, it took a hunk of money all at once. The only other times I would go to the store was to get milk and bread and eggs, and over the course of the month, going to the local convenience stores for those items, i probably spent the same amount or more I spent on the heart of my diet on my monthly shopping trips.

AND THAT’S THE FUCKING POINT OF WHY THIS IS SO FUCKING STUPID AND EVIL AND WASTEFUL. They’ll never be able to go to a proper grocery store and do a smart shopping trip, they are damned to a life of daily trips to convenience stores to give away a buck to the banks for the withdrawal and then probably another 2 bucks to the terminal provider, and then forced to buy processed crap with no nutritional value at inflated prices. You can’t even put this bill on a stupid/evil continuum because it is 100% stupid and 100% evil.

I fucking hate conservatives. I guess this gives them more opportunities to sneer at the poors when they are in front of them at the atm getting their bowl of daily gruel, so it’s a win for them.

Dickheads.