« Reply #50 on: October 17, 2009, 07:14:49 AM »
Originally, that's the way it was, when first set up under the Great Society.
The purpose of food stamps was two-fold--to feed the hungry, and to help the farmer.
In fact, food-stamps were a program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture at first.
Food-stamps were good only for purchasing basic foods.
The farmer benefited, because the farmer gets a bigger cut out of the purchase of raw potatoes, as compared with the purchase of a bag of potato chips.
The farmer gets a bigger cut out of the purchase of a bag of sugar, as compared with the purchase of a 6-pack of Coca-Cola.
The farmer gets a bigger cut out of the purchase of cheddar cheese, as compared with the purchase of some boxed macaroni-and-cheese.
Food-stamps don't give the farmer shit these days.
Earl Butz(?)....remember him? He was the head of the Agricultural Deparment way back in the 70's. His department was the one democrats pointed to and screamed "Look at all the freebies the farmers are getting blah, blah, blah." He lost his job for telling a joke but the truth of the matter was, he lost it for telling the 'truth'. He stated that 65% of his budget was food stamps and all the administrative cost came out of his budget (35%) which actually left very little for real farm programs. He wanted them to put the foodstamp program in the welfare dept. where it belonged ...but then....people might see and complain what welfare was really costing us.
And lastly...are you telling me that they finally moved it from the agricultural dept.?
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