I bought dinner at my favorite Chinese restaurant one recent weekend. Just in casual conversation, I asked my server if the employees took home the uneaten food from the buffet at the end of the day. “If we take any food out at the end of the day, we are fired immediately, on the spot. All leftovers must be thrown into the Dumpster out back at closing.†Our state health department issued rules to food providers that prohibit Dumpster diving. Dumpsters provide food if you have none.
If 100 families attend your local parish, synagogue or church, 17 of these families struggle to provide three meals a day. The category is “food insecure.â€
Without access to school lunches, 305,000 children would not eat three meals a day during the summer months. Meals on Wheels, a 50-50 state and federally funded program, delivers lunches to neighborhoods by truck, feeding both children and the elderly. Meals on Wheels was canceled for our entire state by our state Senate and House of Representatives because federal money was involved. No more peanut butter sandwich, apple and milk in a bag for children and the elderly. The program was eventually reinstated.
People are also reading…
Last month, Feeding America, a food pantry supplier, provided 380,000 meals in Missouri, according to my donation request form. Many people found jobs that pay part time or minimum wage but they still qualify for food stamps and for help from our food pantries. The fact remains that our Legislature shortened or cut the length of time an individual can draw food stamps. Let me clarify: Many people found jobs that are part time or pay minimum wage and they still qualify for food stamps or for help from food pantries. Missouri politicians seem to play dangerous games with food access for our poor.
Now 320,000 working poor adults in Missouri still do not have health care. The Missouri Senate and House actually denied the working poor their right to use federally paid Obamacare or Medicare/Medicaid Plus when for the last four years it cost our state and we, the taxpayers, nothing. You read correctly: nothing for four years. Is any kind of functional health care even affordable for an individual who earns $7.65, $10 or $15 an hour? I guess our Missouri Legislature didn’t want to spoil the working poor people among us.
Understand we, the taxpayers, paid our federal taxes, which provided health care for our country’s working poor. Meanwhile our state senators and representatives denied Missouri’s working poor their right to use this same health care.
If asking questions doesn’t ease your mind, begin by calling your state senator or representative. Ask them why Missouri’s working poor don’t deserve health care, food or a livable minimum wage.
Our federal candidates speak of helping the middle class. If the middle class needs help, what does the lower class need? Food, health care and jobs. If people don’t eat, they can’t work. If they can’t work, they don’t pay taxes. But here is my point, these working poor people do eat, work and pay taxes. It just is not enough money to survive.
Limiting or denying food and real health care for our working poor who choose to eat, work and feed their children is despicable behavior from our state senators and our representatives. If your senator or representative does not deserve another term, vote to replace him or her on Nov. 8.