Main Street

“Hunger Can Be a Positive Motivator”?

Daily Kos diarist Dem Beans points to an appalling newsletter from Missouri State Rep. Cynthia Davis. Objecting to an expansion of a summer lunch program, Davis wrote that “hunger can be a positive motivator. What is wrong with the idea of getting a job so you can get better meals?”

Is Rep. Davis not aware that Missouri’s unemployment rate is 9%? Just going out and getting a job may not be as easy as all that.

Everywhere you look in Rep. Davis’ rejoinder to a bill to feed hungry children, you see a line more appalling than the previous one. Like,

If parents are laid off, that doesn’t mean they stop feeding their children, at least not any of the parents I know. Laid off parents could adapt by preparing more home cooked meals rather than going out to eat.

If you can’t afford enough food, you can’t afford enough food. All the love in the world won’t change that. But she jumps from that “parents will go without to feed their children” schtick (never mind how offensive it is to think that it’s reasonable for parents to have to go hungry to feed their kids) to this:

Why have meals at home with your loved ones if you can go to the government soup kitchen and get one for free? This could have the effect of breaking apart more families.

That’s right, the same parents that love their children enough to go hungry for them might, despite being able to afford plenty of food, forgo eating the meal of their choice in their home alone with their families to save a couple bucks by going to the government soup kitchen. Because that sounds like so much fun.

Each paragraph of Rep. Davis’ response to this summer lunch program for low-income children is offensive and ridiculous in itself. But the shifts in logic from paragraph to paragraph are simply astounding—one moment her imagined low-income family is laid off, the next someone in the family could just go get a job if they wanted. One moment they love each other enough to do without, the next the family would be broken apart by the prospect of a free meal at the government soup kitchen.

But then, it does take some seriously flawed logic to argue against feeding hungry children.