You’ve probably never heard of Representative Jim McGovern, and that apparently doesn’t sit well with the Massachusetts congressman. To be fair, McGovern has always had his work cut out for him in breaking through the noise that the rest of the Massachusetts delegation makes. After all, this is the state that has foisted Ted Kennedy, John Kerry and Barney Frank on the land. To be a Bay State congressman and stand out, the bar has been set pretty high.
So let’s give McGovern credit for giving “breaking through to the mainstream” the old college try this week as he perpetrates one of the silliest stunts in recent political history. In order to show his solidarity with America’s poor, McGovern is spending the week subsisting on three dollars of food a day. Why three dollars? Because the typical food stamp recipient receives three dollars in food stamps a day.
Of course, like most pieces of political street theatre, McGovern’s stunt is 100% undiluted nonsense. The Congressman doesn’t mention that unlike legislators participating in a headline hunting piece of political performance art, food stamp recipients usually use their three dollars in food stamp aid to supplement their food purchases, not as their sole recourse from hunger. McGovern also ignores the fact that food stamp recipients have other forms of income like SSI, welfare, some type of child support, or, and I hope the Congressman is sitting down for this one, a job. Many of the poor use a portion of those other income sources to buy food, because, as Jim McGovern is proving to a previously perplexed nation, $3 is not very much to dine on for an entire day. Glad we cleared that up.
The shame of such rubbish is it would be a swell thing if we had a serious conversation on poverty in this country. We could discuss the rotting school systems that do little more than warehouse children and buy off unions. We could probe why our underclass produces a disproportionate amount of obese young people. At least Jim McGovern is proving it’s not because they’re literally getting fat on food stamps.
And yet the Jim McGoverns of the world reduce 21st century down to a Dickensian narrative that simply doesn’t fit the time. Our country is not plagued by shivering shoeless street urchins who go to sleep hungry, hoping they can get hired as a chimney sweep in the Edwards Mansion. And as long as the poor’s putative champions in congress insist on demagoging the issue rather than substantively engaging it, progress will be hard to come by.
Did Congressman Jim McGovern really hope to accomplish anything here besides winning a few headlines? I link, you decide.
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