Taxpayers subsidize Amazon. (Amazon?!) We shouldn't have to. -- Sept. 6, 2018 column

By MARSHA MERCER

President Donald J. Trump rails against Jeff Bezos, owner of The Washington Post, because Trump hates the Post’s tough coverage of his administration. For Trump, it’s always all about him.

Former presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders attacks Bezos because he’s the richest man on earth and chief executive of Amazon. Thousands of Amazon workers reportedly make so little they have to rely on public assistance. For Sanders, it’s about taxpayers subsidizing the rich.

Must be an election year.

“The American people are tired of subsidizing multi-billionaires who own some of the largest and most profitable corporations in America,” Sanders, a Vermont independent, said Wednesday when he proposed the Stop BEZOS Act -- Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act.

Nothing subtle in that stiletto-knife acronym.   

The measure would require companies with more than 500 workers to reimburse, in effect, the government for federal benefits their low-wage workers receive. If an Amazon worker received $2,000 in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, formerly food stamps, Amazon would be taxed $2,000 to cover the cost.

Amazon.com Inc. reached $1 trillion in market value Tuesday, and Bezos’ personal net worth is somewhere in the stratosphere of $167 billion. Naturally people resent him and Amazon’s ever-expanding reach into our lives -- even as we enjoy one-click ordering and same-day delivery.

Amazon is not the only employer that relies on the kindness of taxpayers. Workers at Walmart, Burger King, McDonalds and American Airlines, among others, get federal assistance.     

“Thousands of American workers have to rely on food stamps, Medicaid and public housing to survive. That is what a rigged economy looks like,” Sanders tweeted.

Rep. Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, has introduced a similar bill in the House.

But don’t get your hopes -- or your dander -- up. These bills are dead. Nothing will come of them.

Like Trump’s claim Bezos should pay higher delivery fees to the U.S. Postal Service, Sanders is making a political point. Sanders’ bill is still significant because it is ludicrous that taxpayers have to plump the bottom line of companies like Amazon.

A living wage is still a dream for many in this country. Congress refuses to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour, though many states have. About 39.6 million Americans still need SNAP benefits, despite Republican efforts to pare the rolls.

Taxing the companies is pleasantly punitive but it wouldn’t put a dime in workers’ pockets and could provide a disincentive to hire poor people.

Amazon reported its median salary was $28,446 last year but insists that’s the global median and include part-time workers. The median salary in the United States is $34,123, and full-time employees receive generous benefits, the company said. Median, as you know, means half the people make more and half less.

But, Sanders said, the figures are misleading because Amazon hires 40 percent of its workforce as temporary workers, and their pay isn’t included.

At a “CEOs vs Workers” panel Sanders held in July, Seth King, an eight-year Navy vet who worked at Amazon’s fulfillment center in Chester, Va., talked about working conditions.   

On his feet for 10 hours, he was not allowed to sit down or talk to coworkers in his aisle, and work goals were unattainable, he said. Isolated and depressed, he quit after two months. Sanders plans to visit the Chester facility this month.

Sanders Wednesday shared this story from a current employee:  

“I work 40 hours a week at $13.25. I have 2 kids to support. I receive 90 dollars of food stamps . . . I don’t make enough to eat lunch at work so I split a protein shake between 2 meals to make sure my children eat,” the worker wrote.

Is this the kind of country we want?

Sanders says billionaires like Bezos and the Walton family of Walmart need to get off corporate welfare and pay their workers a living wage. A Democratic Congress might nudge them in that direction.

Trump says the economy has never been better, he’s doing the best job of any president ever, and everybody’s rich. He wants a Republican Congress so he can keep things as they are.

For me, there’s no contest.   

©2018 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Fighting hunger or the poor? Political battle over SNAP resumes -- April 19, 2018 column

 By MARSHA MERCER

Long before President Donald Trump bestowed a lavish tax break on the rich and proposed “harvest baskets” for the poor, another president said:

“That hunger and malnutrition should persist in a land such as ours is embarrassing and intolerable.”

Name that president. Was it Democrat FDR, JFK or LBJ?

Guess again. Republican Richard Nixon sent Congress the optimistic message in May 1969 that “the most bounteous of nations” should expand food stamps as part of an array of approaches to beat hunger. The program grew dramatically in the 1970s.

Back then, fighting hunger – not the poor -- was a bipartisan cause.

Then, presidential candidate Ronald Reagan reaped political hay by demonizing “welfare queens.” In office, he slashed the social safety net, including food stamps.

When Republican Newt Gingrich ran for president, briefly, in 2012, he called President Barack Obama “the best food stamp president in American history.” It wasn’t a compliment.

More than 46 million people received food stamps that year. As the economy improved, food stamp rolls dropped. About 40 million participated in January 2018, the lowest level since 2010. 

But, to borrow a Reagan phrase, here we go again.

It’s an election year, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, as food stamps are officially called, is a political flash point.

Democrats on the House Agriculture Committee were in open revolt Wednesday over a bill by Chairman Mike Conaway, Republican of Texas, that cuts spending and imposes new work requirements for almost all SNAP participants.  

Conaway contended his bill provides participants “the hope of a job and a skill and a better future for themselves and their families.”   

But Democrats, while supporting current work requirements, condemned the new rules, which were formulated without their input.

“Let me be clear: This bill, as currently written, kicks people off the SNAP program,” said Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota, the committee’s top Democrat, who called it an “ideological attack” on SNAP. It would create “giant, untested bureaucracies at the state level” lacking the money needed for meaningful job training, he said.

About 2 million people — particularly in low-income working families with children — would receive less or lose benefits altogether, the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said in an analysis. A few would receive higher benefits, due to changes in how earnings are counted, but the net effect would still be a significant cut overall.

At $70 billion a year, food stamps are about three-quarters of spending in the Farm Bill, which also pays for crop subsidies, farm credit and land conservation. The bill cuts food stamp spending by $17.1 billion over 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office estimates.

The committee approved the bill on a party line vote, but its future is murky. Even if the full House approves it, the Senate Agriculture Committee plans to write a bipartisan bill. In the past, an alliance of rural and urban lawmakers with different priorities has pushed the Farm Bill through Congress.

It’s worth remembering that 43 percent of SNAP participants live in a household where someone works. Rules already require participants to meet work requirements unless exempt because of age, disability or another reason. Able-bodied adults without dependents – ABAWDs in government jargon -- 18 to 49 can receive benefits for three months but after that must work or be in training. 

The House bill requires all work-capable adults aged 18 to 59 who are not disabled or caring for a child under 6 to demonstrate every month they are working or in job-training 20 hours a week.

Critics see punitive and racial overtones in the bill.

“The images of `able-bodied’ men not working are of African American men,” Rep. David Scott, Democrat of Georgia, said at the hearing.

“I guarantee you, if all the people who were on food stamps were white, there wouldn’t be this,” he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The House bill is an embarrassment, as was the Trump administration’s plan to begin distributing non-perishable items in “harvest boxes” to replace some food stamp benefits. That plan was widely panned as unworkable and seems to have been scrapped.   

The House bill should meet a similar end. In this “most bounteous of nations,” the Senate should start over with a bill Democrats and Republicans can support.

©2018 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Doing something right on obesity -- Aug. 8, 2013 column

By MARSHA MERCER

In 1974, the federal supplemental food program known as WIC started providing poor women and their young children whole milk and cheese, cereals and other items. Conspicuous by their absence were fruits and vegetables.

 

By the 21^st century, obesity had replaced malnutrition as a public health problem, and the Institute of Medicine recommended in 2005 upping WIC’s nutritional content by adding fruits and vegetables, whole grain cereals, reduced-fat yogurt and other lower-fat dairy products. It also recommended cutting back on the amount of full-fat dairy. The healthier changes took effect in 2009.

This week we began to see the fruit of those changes. We are gaining ground in the war on childhood obesity

.

The decline in child obesity rates is small, but the trend is encouraging. After decades of explosive growth, the obesity rate among low-income preschoolers has leveled off nationally and is starting to fall in some states, government researchers reported.

Among children 2 to 4, the obesity rate between 2008 and 2011 dropped in 18 states and the Virgin Islands, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Florida, Georgia and Mississippi were among the states with declines.  

The obesity rate for low-income preschoolers increased in only three states -- Colorado, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. And in 20 others and Puerto Rico, the rate was unchanged. These included Alabama and North Carolina. No data was available for 10 states – including Virginia.

Washington typically gets the blame, but this is a moment when the federal government deserves praise for doing something right. Changes in WIC – formally the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children – were cited as a major factor in the fight against child obesity.

WIC helps feed more than 9 million poor pregnant and postpartum women, infants and children under 5 a year. It provides nutrition education and referrals to health care and social services and promotes breastfeeding, which may help prevent child obesity, although that’s not certain.

First lady Michelle Obama has been derided for the White House vegetable garden and her Let’s Move! Campaign, but she is leading by example and deserves a shout out. In addition, child care centers around the country, following her lead, have adopted healthier food choices and exercise programs.

The government says simple things like breakfast, playground time and water fountains can help in the childhood obesity fight. Every little bit helps because children who are overweight or obese are five times more likely than normal-weight kids to be overweight or obese as adults and to suffer related health conditions – and higher health care costs.

       

We still have a long way to go to reverse the obesity trend. One in eight preschoolers is obese, and the problem is worse among black and Hispanic children.  

“Obesity remains epidemic,” says Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the  CDC, but “the tide has begun to turn for some kids in some states. While the changes are small, for the first time in a generation they are going in the right direction."

So, what’s next?

A new study led by Dr. Mark D. DeBoer of the University of Virginia found that little ones, like their older brothers and sisters, gain weight with sugary drinks. Two- to five-year-olds who drank one sugar-sweetened soda, juice or sports drink a day were more likely to be obese than other kids their age who had such drinks less frequently.

No big surprise there, but what are the policy implications? Food stamps – called SNAP – can’t be used for tobacco, alcohol or even soap products. What if SNAP benefits couldn’t buy sugary drinks?

In 2011, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg tried to find out. He asked the federal Department of Agriculture for permission to prohibit purchases of sugary drinks with food stamps. No, the government said, Bloomberg’s request was too broad.

The makers of soft drinks and junk food argue rightly that no one item causes weight gain; it’s a matter of total calories, in and out. They’ve cut back on sugar, salt and package sizes. That’s good for health – and business.

But if we’re serious about improving the nation’s health and cutting health care costs, we should use food stamps to encourage healthy food choices. The new WIC evidence indicates it’s time to give revamping SNAP a try.   

© 2013 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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