Too many Travis County residents are going hungry unnecessarily. Sustainable Food Policy Board member Arthur D'Andrea says only 47% of Travis County residents who are eligible for food stamps actually participate in the program.See, if the government says you are eligible for food stamps and you don't apply, then of course, you must be going hungry.
Or perhaps, you know, you have other means of support. Or the eligibility requirements are too lenient. Nah, that couldn't be it.
D'Andrea says the county leaves over 150-million in federal money on the table.
And this is a bad thing? I guess in some eyes (i.e. a bureaucrat's), it is. To a tax-payer's eyes, this is a good thing.
D'Andrea says the city needs to make it easier to apply for food stamps and get the word out what it takes to qualify for the assistance.
Look, I actually agree with this - I find it extremely easy to believe that federal, state and local governments have managed to come up with the most complex way possible to apply for aid, and streamlining it (and removing some of the associated bureaucracy) would be a good thing. But I don't think that it's a big problem that not enough people are living off on the behest of the government; quite the contrary, the problem is that too many people are. So efforts to get more people dependent on tax dollars get a thumbs down from me.
