A Few Lawmakers Used the Bible to Keep Food From the Poor and Hungry
As Pope Equates Food Waste to Stealing from the Poor's Table
Some lawmakers are using the Bible to defend their position of keeping food out of the mouths of the hungry.
There is debate surrounding reformation of the Farm Bill, mainly dealing with providing insurance for farmers and their crops. However attention is also focused on how to trim some of the overall cost of the bill, which totals nearly $100 billion a year. $80 billion of that goes to assist hungry Americans.
One of the ideas that has been put forth would cut $4.1 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), popularly known as food stamps. Data shows that enrollees to the government food program have grown more than 70 percent in recent years, but that the majority of those receiving food assistance are children, the elderly and disabled.
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A 2012 report from the USDA found that 45 percent of SNAP recipients were under 18 years of age, nearly 9 percent were age 60 or older, and more than 40 percent lived in households with earnings.
In light of these statistics and in defense of such cuts Rep. Stephen Fincher (R-TN) responded to fellow Congressman Juan Vargas (D-Calif.) during a recent House Agriculture debate after Vargas, citing the Book of Matthew, noted, "[Jesus] says how you treat the least among us, the least of our brothers, that's how you treat him."
Fincher then took the floor and recited 2 Thessalonians 3:10 to defend his position to proceed with cuts to the program.
"For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat."
As was previously pointed out that particular verse was not in reference to inept or lazy individuals but rather it was a warning to the people of Thessalonica who believed in the imminent return of Jesus and had therefore decided to stop working while anticipating their ascension into heaven.
But Fincher is not alone in this thinking as another lawmaker has opposed a measure that would cut the sales tax on food in Kansas.
Kansas State Rep. Jeff Melcher came out in opposition of a tax cut put forth by the state's legislature, which would have reduced the tax on food items from 6.3 percent to 4.95 percent, due to his concerns that the poor may be more inclined to purchase food and nothing else.
"It seems to me we are encouraging the behavior of purchasing food and discouraging the behavior of purchasing anything else," Melcher reportedly told his colleagues.
The lawmaker pointed out that the state already had programs to help get food to poor people, and that creating two different tax rates would be additional "complexity" for retailers.
"It seems to me it provides a complexity in the tax code that the retailers will have to deal with," he explained, according to The Wichita Eagle.
In light of the notion that the poor should remain hungry or that somehow allowing less affluent Americans to buy more food as opposed to less is a bad thing the leader of Catholic Church brought the conversation back to the attention of the needs of the less fortunate when he equated an individual's food waste to stealing from the poor during his address for World Environment Day at St. Peters Square.
"We should all remember, however, that throwing food away is like stealing from the tables of the poor, the hungry! I encourage everyone to reflect on the problem of thrown away and wasted food to identify ways and means that, by seriously addressing this issue, are a vehicle of solidarity and sharing with the needy," the pope said.
"If in so many parts of the world there are children who have nothing to eat, that's not news, it seems normal. It cannot be this way! Yet these things become the norm: that some homeless people die of cold on the streets is not news. In contrast, a ten point drop on the stock markets of some cities, is a tragedy."
