Let ‘Em Die: TEApublican Quotes Bible to Justify Letting Poor Starve to Death
In a disgusting display, even by TEApublican standards, Stephen Fincher (R-TN) quoted the “Book of Thessalonians” from the New Testament to justify letting the poor starve. Fincher smugly stated on the House floor:
The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.
Of course, it’s a well-known attribute of conservatives to see things in black and white while often missing more nuanced aspects of real life. In Fincher’s warped mind, people that need help are just lazy moochers who should simply pull themselves up by their bootstraps, even though, as most liberals know, many of these people don’t even have boots–or functioning feet in the context of this analogy–for that matter.
We have three points to make to Mr. Fincher and anyone else who buys into this absurd and disturbing way of thinking.
1. Most people on SNAP are not “unwilling” to work. Food insecurity is a real problem in America, but indolence is not to blame. From a Center on Policy and Budget Priorities (cbpp.org) piece titled, Contrary to “Entitlement Society” Rhetoric, Over Nine-Tenths of Entitlement Benefits Go to Elderly, Disabled, or Working Household:
Some conservative critics of federal social programs, including leading presidential candidates, are sounding an alarm that the United States is rapidly becoming an “entitlement society” in which social programs are undermining the work ethic and creating a large class of Americans who prefer to depend on government benefits rather than work. A new CBPP analysis of budget and Census data, however, shows that more than 90 percent of the benefit dollars that entitlement and other mandatory programs spend go to assist people who are elderly, seriously disabled, or members of working households — not to able-bodied, working-age Americans who choose not to work. This figure has changed little in the past few years.
Share of entitlements benefitsConservatives have also proven to be shameless lying hypocrites in many cases. Take Mark Sanford, who just won a congressional seat in South Carolina, for example. After much finger-wagging, Mr. Sanford voted to impeach President Clinton over the Lewinsky sex scandal, yet asked for forgiveness–without any sense of irony–after being caught romping with his mistress in South America on the tax payer’s dime. It would seem Rep. Fincher also fits this mold.