For those of you who have never experienced the 1st day of the month in an underpriviledged area, I need to let you in on a little secret:
Don't go to Walmart or any other grocery store because it's Food Stamp Day!
It means that every mom with 6 kids takes 3 carts and loads her cart full of junk. I witnessed it yesterday. The one that got me was the lady in front of me in the checkout line...
She was by herself with one cart overflowing with junk. I define "junk" as Little Debbie cakes, Pepsi, Ben and Jerrys ice cream, fruit rollups, frozen pound cake and other high calorie, low nutritional value foods. The cashier had scanned half of her cart, including 3 packs of steak and a fruit tray. Then, the lady looked up an saw that the amount due was over her limit. She ordered the cashier to take the steaks and fruit tray off. This makes complete sense-- take off the healthy stuff but keep the pound cake... What really got me reeling was that she left the milk gallons in the cart. Who in their right mind would purchase soda and Little Debbie cakes over milk and fruit? Crazy! She proceeded to swipe her Food Stamp card to purchase her goods. Then, she asked the cashier to get 2 cigars and she grabbed one last pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream out of her cart (which is still half full!) and used $10 cash to buy them. I couldn't believe my eyes. The kid that was bagging the groceries had to take the cart with all of the groceries that she couldn't afford and put them back. I wanted to tell her "Your welcome. My tax dollars just bought you all that junk. I work 9-5 so you can eat stuff that I can't afford (Ben/Jerrys and steak)."
My proposition: The gov't needs to put tighter regulations on food stamps. There needs to be a limit on what they can buy (like WIC) and they need to set a time limit for how long they can be on it. They should have to show job-seeking progress...