via Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars we learn that the northern wingnuts of Minnesota will not be outdone by the dairyland wingnuts of Wisconsin. Wis. Gov. Scott Walker is trying to crush unions and take away the constitutional right of working people to freely associate - hah! what a piker! a mere robber baron wannabe! Minnesota Republicans want to make it illegal for anyone on public assistance to have more than $20 cash!
On March 15, Angel Buechner of the Welfare Rights Committee testified in front of the House Health and Human Services Reform Committee on House File 171. Buechner told committee members, “We would like to address the provision that makes it illegal for MFIP [one of Minnesota’s welfare programs] families to withdraw cash from the cash portion of the MFIP grant - and in fact, appears to make it illegal for MFIP families to have any type of money at all in their pockets. How do you expect people to take care of business like paying bills such as lights, gas, water, trash and phone?”Which is a actually a partial surrender to all those Cadillac-driving welfare queens in Minnesota - the original bill would have barred those on assistance from getting any cash at all.
House File 171 would make it so that families on MFIP - and disabled single adults on General Assistance and Minnesota Supplemental Aid - could not have their cash grants in cash or put into a checking account. Rather, they could only use a state-issued debit card at special terminals in certain businesses that are set up to accept the card.
Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?
But remember, trying to get millionaires to pay an extra 2% in income taxes is Marxist class warfare by jealous communist who hate successful people who pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps. You know, scrappy entrepreneurs like Paris Hilton and all those hedge fund managers on Wall Street who earn every cent of their million-dollar taxpayer-funded bonuses.
I'm guessing the next step will be Oklahoma bringing back indentured servitude and debtor's prisons or Missouri passing the "Modest Proposal Act" requiring all families on public assistance to sell their children to the nearest rendering plant or perhaps the kindly burghers of Indiana will finally pass the "Work will make you Free" Act to provide a final solution to the poverty problem.
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2 comments:
That's ridiculous, the House File 171 bill doesn't say that.
Angel Buechner either hasn't read the bill or she isn't comprehending it very well.
No where does it state that a recipient in this program can't have more than $20.00 in their pocket.
Read it: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bin/bldbill.php?bill=H0171.1.html&session=ls87
Something Crooks and Liars should have done before spouting such nonsense. (Of course they got the story from fightbacknews.)
As a matter of fact, I have read the bill - we do that kind of thing around here.
Admittedly Angel Buechner is guilding the lily for spin purposes, as is Fightbacknews, but what the bill actually says is that recipients of social assistance cannot draw more than $20 of their social assistance payment in cash and can only spend it using a special debit card that can only be used at certain government approved outlets. Basically, the bill is say that the government doesn't trust poor people with the money it gives them to keep them from freezing or starving to death. That the Daddy-state is sure they would just spend it all on lottery tickets, crack cocaine and strippers. So, if you have a debt to pay to a friend (and how likely is that if you are on Welfare) or you need to take a cab to the hospital or a job interview, or you just want to buy a newspaper or a cup of coffee, well tough luck! Once that $20 is gone, the rest of the money is locked up in the system.
Notice there is no similar limitation on the way the rich get to spend their generous tax cut. They can send it to Switzerland or the Caymans, invest it in a small business or a cocaine deal or just pour out the cash on their bed and roll in it.
Just one more way the GOP is making poverty harder to handle.
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