Marble Falls There is so many things in the news that can grab your attention these days, that if you’re not careful, you can be caught in the maelstrom unwittingly. I apologize for being the answer to the Stones’ song when they asked “who cares about yesterday’s news,” but I find myself still obsessed with Trump’s Big Bad Budget Bill or whatever it’s called. I can’t seem to get over the impact it is going to have on access to food stamps and Medicaid for lower income families. Congress and the Trump team are counting on those families taking a multi-billion dollar hit in order to finance continued benefits for the wealthy.
That’s not news, but bear with me for a minute. I was reading a special issue in High Country News about food and power and how it impacts the western United States. In the opening pages of the magazine, (which I have long supported and enthusiastically recommend even if this is not about marijuana but about the west), they had several pages of illustrations and graphs to highlight the issue. One particularly caught my eye, because it focused on Walmart and Costco stores in the twelve western states and the number that were authorized by the USDA to handle SNAP or food stamps. In 1995, it was only 3 stores, but in 2000, it starting rising, particularly in 2001 when all the Walmarts in California were certified. Costco began taking food stamps in 2009. Now, there are 1128 stores between the two that are SNAP certified.
You may wonder where I’m going with this and thinking, “so what?” Well, if Congress and Trump think that they are going to save billions and gazillions by fleecing the poor, I started to wonder, who else was going to feel the burn? If lower income families are losing billions to buy food, it also means that the places where they shop are also going to be big losers. For Walmart and Costco, Krogers and Albertsons, this has to go right to their bottom line to the tune of billions as well. Maybe they can weather the storm better than smaller operations and mom-and-pops stores, but they are all going to feel the pain as acutely as our families.
There has been a lot of discussion about how the cuts and work requirements fixed onto Medicaid will force the closing of rural and some urban hospitals. My same question fits this situation as well. Saving Medicaid dollars to privilege the rich also means, not simply that more lower income families will lose healthcare, but also that clinics and hospitals will experience the same billions of dollars in lost income, because of these lower expenditures on healthcare.
Why wouldn’t they be allies in a drive to help recipients retain benefits? It’s in their self-interest in the same way as it is in the interest of our members.
They should be! The problem may be the opposite side of the old Garth Brooks song about having “friends in low places.” Maybe if we had some friends in “high places” in health care and grocery, there’s a conversation we could have about the mutual benefits of them joining with us, even if passively, to help us organize to see that eligible families are able to continue to retain their food and health benefits? Why not?