How to talk about food stamps

This Vox piece presents an honest and moving account of how food stamps make up a crucial part of one single-mother's struggle to make ends meet in America. Unfortunately, it's just not convincing. I don't mean to me (I've long been a supporter of expanding the EBT program); I mean to Conservative opponents of the program.

If you want to convince a Republican to support a benefit program - i.e. a program designed to benefit ordinary citizens, rather than banks or corporations - you'll never succeed simply by pointing out that the program alleviates personal suffering.

But you do stand a decent chance of smuggling a compassionate policy past the conservatives if you can manage to dress it up as somehow entrepreneurial or pro-business. Point out that food-stamps will feed the hungry for compassion's sake and they'll question your numbers and go on about "waste, fraud, and abuse..." - thus countering your (naive, sloppy) moral motive with a moral motive (smart, realistic, efficient) of their own. But if you call your policy a voucher program, or, better yet, a plan to boost small local businesses, then you stand a chance of getting the thing passed.

The sad fact is that Republicans will not be moved by stories of personal struggle - they see the poor as weak and unworthy of support. But at the same time they believe themselves to be highly virtuous (which includes being compassionate). They are greatly offended when liberals suggest otherwise, especially when those liberals provide all but incontrovertible proof of their indifference to the suffering of the poor. If you point out their hypocrisy, they get very very mad and your chances of obtaining their support plummet to a level that can only be measured on the Kelvin scale.

The good news is that it's possible to promote food stamps, as well as other financial assistance to struggling Americans, in terms that are more difficult for conservatives to reject.

The money that people receive through the food stamp program doesn't stay in their hands - or their pockets, or under their mattresses - for very long. It gets spent. Where does it get spent? Grocery stores and supermarkets and bodegas and big box stores - in other words, local - and, in many cases, small - businesses. That money in turn gets spent on wages for people who work in the local economy, or on utilities, or on inventory. It circulates directly and almost instantly back into the local economy.

If Democrats were half as adept at propagandistic nomenclature as Republicans, they'd refer to food stamps as a "voucher" system that supports local businesses. And, unlike Republicans, they wouldn't even be lying.