Steve Cohen Celebrates People on Welfare Not Having to Work

After a lot of debate, certain food stamp recipients won’t have to work for their benefits, as certain Republicans in Washington, D.C. wanted.

And for U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Memphis, that’s a cause for celebration.

“On Wednesday, I voted for and the House passed a five-year Farm Bill that protects food assistance, conservation and animal welfare policies that are priorities for residents of the 9th Congressional District,” Cohen said in a newsletter last week to his constituents back home.

“We successfully blocked efforts by the Majority to impose punishing work requirements for food stamp recipients.”

But were those work requirements really punishing, especially in exchange for taxpayer money?

According to The Huffington Post, more than 38 million Americans receive monthly Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits they can use only to buy food in grocery stores.

“The program already has work requirements for the subset of recipients who are able-bodied adults without minor children,” according to the website.

“The House bill would have applied the requirements to parents of children older than 6 and unemployed adults in their 50s, who had previously been exempt.”

According to The Washington Post, the House and Senate deadlocked over multiple issues in the bill, including the work requirements.

Those provisions were ultimately stripped in the compromise package, according to the paper.

Cohen seems to love handing out government goodies, no matter the reason.

He took to the floor of the House recently and introduced an amendment to add $3 million to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Summer Food Service program.

That program gives free food to kids in the summer — at a time when they can’t get free and reduced lunches at school.

Cohen went on to say “the wealthiest nations in the world should not send its children to bed hungry.”

Up until at least 2014, Cohen, As The Star reported, complained too many Tennessee kids were malnourished and starving and only government could step in to fix the problem.

And, yes, Cohen got grant money for that.

This year, however, according to Cohen’s office, too many Volunteer State children are pudgy.

As The Tennessee Star reported earlier this year, the Feds are forcing taxpayers to fork over nearly $200,000 so researchers in Memphis can analyze whether stress makes kids fat.

Cohen was the one who arranged that.

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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].

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