REP. STEPHEN FINCHER: ON A MISSION TO STOP "TAKERS" FROM "STEALING" GOVERNMENT FUNDS

I find absolutely insufferable the "maker"/"taker" dichotomy initially used by the Mitt Romney campaign and now by GOP/Tea Party-types to characterize differing elements of the American public. The arrogant elitism of applying such labels is disgusting.  And the ease with which these “elites”---though, to be sure, referencing Louie Gohmert and Michele Bachmann as “elites” dilutes the sense of the word---arbitrarily identify “makers” from “takers” raises some potentially ugly questions about the real nature of the differentials they use to make their politically and socially utilitarian distinctions.

For example, exactly how does one apply the "maker"/"taker" paradigm to U.S. Representative Stephen Fincher (R-Tenn), whom, after only eight months in office, was named one of the Most Corrupt Members of Congress by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and gets my vote for the single most jaw-dropping, mind-bending act of hypocrisy seen or heard in the 2013 session of the United States Congress---no small feat, I might add.  

For the record, Mr. Fincher, along with several other curiosities residing on the ocean floor, was washed up on the congressional beach during the 2010 Tea Party tidal wave. The receding waters took much of the litter back into the deeps, but he was left behind on the sand to represent Tennessee's 8th District.

During his relatively short career as a congressman,  Mr. Fincher has made something of a name for himself on the basis of his passionate and devout mission to neuter the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program---SNAP.  

More commonly known as the federal food stamp program and funded through the massive Farm Bill, SNAP provides some or all of the daily meals eaten by more than 47 million of America's growing population of poor/hungry people---including an estimated 75,000 military families as well as a disproportionate number of children, disabled persons, and the elderly.

But, despite its lofty and seemingly unassailable goal of reducing what is euphemistically termed "food insecurity,” Mr. Fincher does not like the food stamp program.

It cannot be that he dislikes SNAP because he actually believes the riff that it is a fraud-filled, inefficient federal program.  

I say that because he has access to the same analyses as you and me.  Those studies report that SNAP is one of the most fraud-free programs sponsored by the federal government---the incidence of fraudulent activity involves less than 1% of SNAP funds.  They also report that SNAP is the single most efficient and economically beneficial program on the "discretionary spending" side of the U.S. budget---every $1 of SNAP funding returns $1.72 to local economies (second-best, by the way, are federal unemployment benefits, which return $1.63 to local economies for every dollar spent).    

Simply put, of all the line items in the federal budget, SNAP gives us the best return on the dollar.

No, Mr. Fincher's public statements seem to indicate that his enthusiastic efforts to abolish the food stamp program are generated by his religious beliefs---of which SNAP is apparently violative.

How does the food stamp program violate his religious beliefs?

For starters, Mr. Fincher equates the food stamp program with "stealing." 

Speaking last May to supporters in Memphis, he opined that, while "the role of...Christians...is to take care of each other," the food stamp program should be eliminated because it is "not for Washington to steal from those in the country and give to others in the country." 

Further, Mr. Finch believes---or, says he believes---that his effort to, in effect, make the hungry hungrier is justified by the Bible. Last spring, during a House Agriculture Committee debate on the Farm Bill, he explained his opposition to SNAP by conveniently misinterpreting and cheerfully misusing one of the most frequently misinterpreted and oft-misused texts in all of the Bible---II Thessalonians 3:10, in which the Apostle Paul writes to the Christians in Thessalonica that "He who does not work, will not eat."

Mr. Fincher's woeful attempt at biblical scholarship---it is representative of an age-old and widely-used practice called "proof-texting"---begs for more comprehensive commentary.  However, that will have to wait for another time. It is his off-the-chain hypocrisy that is worthy of more immediate attention.

You see, while Mr. Fincher makes no apology for arbitrarily dividing Americans into two groups---"makers" and "takers"---and while he considers "taking" government funds to be "stealing" (and, thus, outside the lines of a Christian ethos), the fact of the matter is that he and his relatively wealthy farm family have been "taking"---“stealing?”---federal crop subsidies for well over a decade.

Government figures show that Mr. Fincher has received---from the Farm Bill, no less, which also dispenses food stamp funds---$3.48 million in subsidies since 1999. Indeed, no member of the current Congress received more subsidy funding in 2012---he’s #1!

Furthermore, if you add the funds his father and brother---his "business partners" in the family's cotton farms, which stretch over parts of five Tennessee counties---have "taken" in Farm Bill subsidies over just the last decade, the amount these self-described "makers" have banked from government coffers rises to a total of $9 million.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Fincher, despite the obvious conflict-of-interest, has refused to recuse himself from voting on the Farm Bill---enthusiastically promoting and voting for the cuts in SNAP while, with equal enthusiasm, promoting and voting for the increases in direct-payment subsidies that profit him and his family.

Apparently, for Mr. Fincher, the "taker" designation only applies to those Americans who eek out a living at the bottom of the food chain---the military families and the children and the disabled and the elderly and the working poor and the non-working poor who "steal" an average of $65/week in government funds in order to feed their families.  

For Mr. Fincher, in other words, you're only a "thief" if the average amount you "take" from the government is less than $300/month.

If you “take”/”steal” more than that---say, $9 million over a decade---Mr. Fincher would undoubtedly characterize you not as a "thief" but as a "maker."  Because, as he would have us think, taking government funds to which you are, well, "entitled" isn't "stealing."