Yeah, like this woman who’s pregnant with her 5th child and on food stamps?
“It pays $1,200 a month. The first biweekly check covers rent on her apartment, the second bills. She feeds her family out of tips and about $300 a month in food stamps (two-fifths of Clay County’s population rely on them). Hensley, who’s 30, is seven months pregnant and won’t get paid maternity leave, so she’s planning to take just four weeks off –- as she did with her previous five children. That took a toll on her health, she says, but “a month is a long time when you ain’t got nothing. You never get to sleep peaceful at night.’’
“Federal money rescued rural America after the Great Depression of the 1930s, as the government poured resources into job-creating investments. Today, Washington’s main presence in places like Clay County is the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It helps with everythingfrom building houses to providing medical services. Clay County got a $50,000 grant this year for an ambulance, an urgent need in a region blighted by opioid addiction.
The agency also helped bring wireless Internet to remote areas. That creates opportunities for people to “make good wages from their home,’’ said Anne Hazlett, the USDA’s assistant to the secretary for rural development.
‘Catastrophic’
But the Trump administration plans to cut USDA funding by 16 percent in fiscal 2019, and revamp the food stamps it distributes.
In Clay County, that’s Karrie Gay’s job, as supervisor of family support and social services. She sees some 40 clients a day, many complaining about frozen benefits. Her office is already down two people, and will only replace one because of a state hiring freeze.
Cuts to food stamps would be “catastrophic,’’ says Gay. “We have a lot of clients who have no income. That’s their only source of food.’’
“Clay County delivered an 87 percent vote for Trump in 2016, and this month helped send Republican Hal Rogers back to Congress for a 20th term with almost 80 percent of the county’s ballots.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-28/left-behind-by-trump-s-boom-the-rural-americans-who-elected-him