May I suggest a KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid!
Eliminate the red tape, the petty, silly, antiquated bureaucratic rules of the current EBT/SNAP food program, like not being able to use your EBT card at McDonald’s or other fast-food places. Homeless people have no stove or kitchen to cook commodities! Rich people — lawyers, college professors and federal bureaucrats — have no clue what happens to “the little people” in the real world outside your ivory towers, on our city streets. You don’t even ride the bus! Here’s what happens: Almost everyone sells their food stamps the first day of each month for 50 cents on the dollar.
Instead, I suggest you convert all welfare programs, including Supplemental Security Income, EBT/SNAP, TANF, public housing, etc., to a simple, guaranteed monthly income put on the current EBT card. This would cut out money-grubbing middlemen like slumlords and those who take advantage of us low-income people, by paying only half the value on food stamps. It would also save hardworking taxpayers a lot of money by eliminating the huge, wasteful cost of bureaucracy, paperwork and stupid, petty rules. Each person would receive a monthly electronic deposit on their EBT/SNAP card, report this as income on their IRS form 1040, and pay the same 12 percent Social Security “self-employed” payroll tax that working folks pay each year. People who depend on taxpayer-funded welfare must learn “there is no free lunch”: Hardworking taxpayers foot the bill for ALL government costs. Welfare recipients who agree to register for work and accept placement in a job should get double the amount of those who do not work! And Congress, give retired workers struggling to survive on Social Security a retroactive cost-of-living raise equal to what you members of Congress have been rewarding yourselves and federal employees all these years, with our tax dollars. After many years of getting nothing, I appreciate the 2 percent we finally got this year. With my 2 percent “raise,” I can afford to buy one 53-cent cup of senior coffee at McDonald’s each day … plus 3 McChickens or McDoubles each month! At least McDonald’s gives one free refill on coffee!
And Congress, please give D.C. residents the right to vote for real, actual voting members of the U.S. Senate and House.
Also add a few more public toilets for the homeless in our nation’s capital city.
Thank you very much,
Gary Minter
