U.S. District Judge Kenneth Gonzales of Las Cruces has issued an injunction that stops New Mexico from requiring able bodied childless adults ages 18-49 to spend 80 hours in approved work activity in order to receive food assistance or SNAP.
This would have affected some 11,000 to almost 18,000 New Mexicans as the federal waiver had expired.
Ok, a little background is needed. In the 90’s the federal government under the leadership of Newt Gingrich attempted to reign in the massively bloated welfare system before it collapsed under its own weight. It was signed into law by Bill Clinton and before long the Earned Income Tax credit was snuck in to replace welfare until another way could be found by progressives to restore it, enter the crash of 2008 and President Barak Obama.
As a part of the effort to bankrupt the US treasury, I mean stimulate the economy, one of the measures put into place by Mr. Obama was to waiver the food stamp program and allow able bodied adults to receive benefits long enough for every one to forget the rules existed and cry foul when the waivers ran out.
As these waivers did expire it fell to the states to re-establish the parameters under which childless adults might still get their food and work is not high on the list for these healthy individuals.
The argument made by the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty to judge Gonzales was that the state did not effectively communicate the changes to recipients and therefore the judge should slow up those changes until the state is in more agreement with the center.
We should note that more than 500,000 people get food assistance from the SNAP program, which might not sound too bad until you realize the population of the state of New Mexico sits at a little more than 2 million people.
In other words, more than 25% of our people are getting their food from the government and only 4% were being asked to do some form of work in return and a federal judge orders that we are creating too great a burden on able bodied and childless adults.
You can probably guess my response by now if you have listened for any length of time, the judge needs to be promptly removed from the bench because he is clearly unfit for his office and we need to insist that the state get even tougher on those getting assistance.
It is not unreasonable that healthy adults be required to work for their food, in fact it is shameful for the individual and the state that so many are dependent on the state. People need adversity to overcome and tough times force us to become stronger as a people and a nation.
The welfare state saps the strength of our nation and steals the dignity of our citizens but this is the goal of the enemy, to steal, kill and destroy and Judge Gonzales is furthering that goal.
If you want proof of just what kind of damage we are doing to our children and grandchildren and how little work we are getting done, just go to your local grocery supercenter and note how many people are wearing pajamas or tank tops and how many un-bathed and un-groomed kids you see, do you really believe they just came form work?
