Missouri Republican lawmaker Rick Brattin is fed up with food stamp abuse in his home state. And he’s finally doing something extraordinary about it that’s ticking off much of the American Left.



From Mad World News, in a piece appropriately titled, “Parasites Living The High Life TICKED Over Upcoming Changes To Benefits”:

Some people on food stamps are abusing the system and spending taxpayer-funded money on luxuries they otherwise couldn’t afford. This may be coming to a screeching halt, as one lawmaker in Missouri has simply had enough and decided to propose a bill that would limit what recipients can buy with their food stamp benefits.

After Missouri Republican Rick Brattin heard a food stamp recipient say, “This is the way I want to live and I don’t really see anything changing,” he knew something needed to be addressed. Doing exactly what he sought out to do, Brattin has pushed for legislation that puts restrictions on what food stamps can buy. According to Western Journalism, the bill would ban the purchase with food stamps of “cookies, chips, energy drinks, soft drinks, seafood or steak.” TRENDING: CNN’s Anderson Cooper And Joe Biden Caught On Camera Completely Ignoring Social Distancing Rules “The intention of the bill is to get the food stamp program back to it’s original intent, which is nutrition assistance,” admitted Brattin. When the program allows benefit recipients to buy unhealthy food items, it’s not providing those people with the nutrition the program originally intended to provide to needy families. The purpose is to help them survive by assisting with the basics, not providing them with better menu options than the taxpayers that fund the program. If you eat better living off the system, why go back to the workforce? Although seafood and steak are healthy options, many food stamp users have grown accustom to buying luxury food items in this category, like porterhouse steaks or lobster. “My intention wasn’t to get rid of canned tuna and fish sticks,” explained Brattin. “I have seen people purchasing filet mignons and crab legs with their EBT cards. When I can’t afford it on my pay, I don’t want people on the taxpayer’s dime to afford those kinds of foods either.” When taxpayers are funding your food and can’t afford the steak and lobster you’re eating, the system is flawed. Obviously, many liberals are against the new bill Brattin has proposed.

I wrote here about the American Founders’ approach to government-funded welfare.

The Founders’ welfare system had three basic principles:

1. It should only be for those who truly need it.

The Founders believed government had an obligation to the governed to provide a safety net, but only for those individuals incapable of providing for themselves, like widows, orphans, the elderly, and the mentally and physically handicapped. If you were capable of working, and refused, government owed you nothing.

2. It should be the bare minimum.

The Founders believed that government should provide the basic necessities of life for those who were incapable of providing for themselves, but it would only be the bare minimum. This meant that you would have food to eat and a place to sleep free of charge, but nothing much beyond that. In other words, welfare was not meant to be comfortable.

3. It should be done at the state and local level, NEVER the national.

The Founders believed that the form of government closest to the individual could best take care of the individual if necessary. This meant all welfare would come from the local and state authorities. The national government was too remote and too general to ever be suited to providing welfare. As a result, poor houses, orphanages, and insane asylums were built by local authorities, at public expense. Churches and neighborhoods also gave some relief.

Today, we have completely abandoned the Founders’ system.

If you don’t believe Modern Liberals are against even the moderate kinds of reforms proposed by Missouri Republican Rick Brattin, just take a look at this piece from The Washington Post, with the deceptive title, “Missouri Republicans are trying to ban food stamp recipients from buying steak and seafood”:

In 2013, Fox News proudly broadcast an interview with a young food stamp recipient who claimed to be using the government benefit to purchase lobster and sushi. “This is the way I want to live and I don’t really see anything changing,” Jason Greenslate explained to Fox. “It’s free food; it’s awesome.”

That story fit a longtime conservative suspicion that poor people use food stamps to purchase luxury items. Now, a Republican state lawmaker in Missouri is pushing for legislation that would stop people like Greenslate and severely limit what food stamp recipients can buy. The bill being proposed would ban the purchase with food stamps of “cookies, chips, energy drinks, soft drinks, seafood or steak.” … But seafood and steak? Seafood has been shown, time and again, to be a healthy part of any diet. And steak is such a broad category that it’s essentially banning people from buying any flat cuts of beef, from porterhouse to flank. “It just seems really repressive,” said Mark Rank, a professor at Washington University and author of the book Living on the Edge: The Realities of Welfare in America. “I don’t see how it makes any sense to ban some of these foods. Fish is something that should really be in your diet. And steak, what does that mean in this context?”

So, don’t let yourself be fooled when Modern Liberals tell you that they, too, are interested in curbing food stamp abuse. Their goal is to protect the abuse, not limit it. The only reform they’re really interested in is providing more relief to more people, keeping poor people poor and thus increasing dependence on government handouts.

That’s the Liberal agenda, and although the Conservative approach is far from perfect, when compared to the American Founders, at least it’s a step in the right direction.

If the Left doesn’t try to kill it first, of course.

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