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Today the associated press published "$25 Check May Cost You Food Stamps" which says:

"When President Barack Obama increased unemployment benefits as part of his economic stimulus, he also made some Americans ineligible for hundreds of dollars a month in food stamps.

Under the economic recovery plan, laid-off workers have seen a $25 weekly bump in their unemployment checks as part of a broad expansion of benefits for the poor. But the law did not raise the income cap for food stamp eligibility, so the extra money has pushed some people over the limit.

Laid-off workers and state officials are only now realizing the quirk, a consequence of pushing a $787 billion, 400-page bill through Congress and into law in three weeks.

And for people hurt by the change, there's no way around it."

Excellent.  So in exchange for $25.00 the poorest people in the country are no longer able to eat...

Of course this should come as no surprise to anyone as I would argue it's nearly impossible for a human being to read, understand, and adjust 400 pages (or more sometimes) of legal text in 3 weeks.  Actually, I'll take that a step further; it CAN'T be a surprise.  If you ask your congressmen about this problem they'll tell you very bluntly that they don't get a chance to read stimulus bills.  Don't believe me?  Here is an excerpt from a letter written by my old congressmen (Fred Upton) that I ran on this blog several months ago: (original here)

"I voted against the original House bill for a number of reasons. First, while I acknowledge the efforts made by the White House to reach across the aisle, no significant Republican amendments-regardless of their merit-were allowed by Speaker Pelosi and her leadership in any of the three committees of jurisdiction: Ways and Means, Appropriations, and, the committee on which I serve, Energy and Commerce. The same closed-door tactics ruled the day on the House floor, where debate was severely limited to a few hours on an $800 billion bill. As a consequence, rather than forging a bi-partisan package to rally the country and thus improve consumer confidence-which is a big part of our problem-we ended up with a heavily partisan spending bill that will increase the national debt to its highest levels...

...Sadly, despite a nearly unanimous vote in the House to make this 1,000-plus page bill available to everyone at least 48 hours before a vote, we were only given a few hours and only five hard copies for all 434 members of the House. In essence, members were given one minute of consideration for every one billion dollars of spending in the package. Not surprisingly, in the very short time we had, we discovered a number of costly provisions that would do little in the way of immediate job creation."

Now consider this from April 14, 2009:

"In October of 2008 the Wall Street Journal ran an article about how our Congress wasn't fit to make economic decisions related to the then "infant" economic crisis. The article stated:

"As Congress works on one of the most important pieces of economic legislation in a generation, a Washington research group has pointed out that more than 8 in 10 members of Congress don't have a formal educational background in the business, economics, or finance fields.

The research by the Center for Economic and Entrepreneurial Literacy, which aims to educate the general public about finance issues, showed that about 14% have degrees in economics-related fields and just 6.7% specifically have an economics degree. More than 30% of members have degrees in politics and government, while 18% majored in humanities.

CEEL's method of not counting law degrees excludes a total of 193 members, or 36% of Congress."

So according to this research the following is true: 36% of Congress has a law degree, 30% more have a political science degree, and at least 18% majored in the humanities. That means that roughly 84% of our leadership has a degree in (no offense to anyone with these degrees as they are important) something that has very little to do with the issues they legislate. Again, I'm not attempting to belittle any of these degrees; I'm simply saying they are more often than not irrelevant to the issues that Congress decides on for the country."

So what's the point here?  The point is that as the American public we need to deeply consider "quick fix" situations when they are presented to us.  We need to watch for the next time that we are told the country must act immediately, and then adamantly push back until we can agree to a lasting solution.  A great current example of this problem is healthcare reform: "Obama to AMA: Health Care Reform Can't Wait."  We need to say "Mr. President, sir, if history is any judge, if we have learned anything from the past, it is that this plan can wait long enough to be fully considered."

Come on people! When has spending trillions of dollars quickly ever made sense?  Further still, does it make sense to do so while the US is literally going broke?  By now it should be glaringly obvious that we cannot reform a multi trillion dollar problem in a matter of weeks.  That's not to say that I don't agree with the President when he says health care is a pressing problem, it is. However, we can wait a few months to get it right, for if we don't, America will be sicker than ever before. 

So what can you do about it?  Take the time to write to your representatives!  Tell them to consider carefully their actions and weigh all available options.  Tell them that they need to be good stewards of your future and your money.  It's up to us to push back against quick decisions and egregious spending without adequate consideration.  We're being robbed America, its high time we open our eyes to that fact and do something about it.

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