Republicans at all levels of government are suspect of public assistance programs like Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANIF), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP; a.k.a., food stamps) and even the earned-income tax credit.  Some Republican-led legislatures around the country are currently trying to pass laws that will delineate items that recipients of food stamps cannot purchase with those food stamps, which includes tickets to movie theaters and lingerie but – ironically – the list of excluded items does not include guns and ammunition.

Some lawmakers in these legislatures believe that food stamp recipients are using food stamps to purchase foods like expensive fish, crab, lobster and other expensive seafood so they are working to portray them as virtual welfare kings and queens, which – by the way, would serve to bolster Republican talking points whenever they spar with Democrats during the approaching 2016 elections.

Even if this is happening these occurrences are likely rare and they are more than offset by, if we use the same premise, what could be referred to as corporate welfare kings and queens.  However, these kings and queens seemingly go unnoticed and actually operate without even a hint of scrutiny by these concerned public servants.

Both those on public assistance programs and many large corporations are subsidized by taxpayers.  There are many hardworking Americans who work long, hard hours every day, some of whom work two jobs, to support their family and they still must receive public assistance to make ends meet.  These people are taxpayers and so have put something into the pool of funds from which they are benefiting because they have fallen on hard times.

It is likely that these hardworking Americans would not need to be on public assistance if they were paid a livable wage.  Yet and still most of these same lawmakers who are leery of safety net programs are against an increase in the minimum wage.  Most of them are also against equal work for equal pay.  They say that to implement either or both of these things would be ‘job killers’.

Those lawmakers who are pushing to establish laws that would dictate to food stamp recipients what foods that they cannot buy with their food stamps are not unaware that many of those corporations that are paying these low wages are making unparalleled profits.  They are not unaware that many of those multi-billion dollar corporations many times pay less tax annually than many average Americans pay.

So when taxpayers subsidize those needy Americans who are on public assistance programs because they do not earn enough to make ends meet they are in essence subsidizing those corporations that are paying unlivable wages.  And when taxpayers do this, many times these corporations are not among the contributors to this taxpayer pool of cash that the government is dipping into because many times many of them pay zero taxes.

How can Republicans even pretend to stand in support of the middle class when they allow corporations to get away with shenanigans like this and yet cry foul when hardworking Americans reach out for assistance from safety net programs that were specifically put in place to assist them in their times of need?  How can Republicans in good conscience work to destroy these programs while working to lower corporate tax rates?

I invite anyone – whether they are a Democrat, Republican or Independent, who disagrees with me to step up and speak up.  Tell me in your comment on this website why you believe that I am either misinformed and/or in error in what I have stated in this article.

In the meantime, in the event that any reader of this article is interested reading an article that addresses this same subject in more detail; following is a link to an article in The New York Times by Patricia Cohen.  The title of the article is ‘Working, but Needing Public Assistance Anyway’.

Eulus Dennis