Why Not Just Create a Government Jobs Program?

So the Scrooge-like Virginian and Republican Majority Leader, Eric Cantor, and company, want to kick half the people on "food stamps" off the program and the other half they want to have them work for what would essentially be $2.50 per hour in order to get benefits.  However, slavery was outlawed in 1865, so the $2.50 transgression could conceivably be stopped in Court, if not by the Democrats in the U.S. Senate or President Obama's veto.  If Mr. Cantor, Speaker John Boehner and the House Republican rank-in-file are so worried about people getting something for free, then why don't they create a government jobs program for anyone that can't get a job in the private sector, with the pay being set, at least, at the federal and state minimum wage levels, instead of trying to make people work for slave wages?  They could also stop government subsidies to rich corporations if "something for nothing" was really their concern. 

Jobs would reduce the need for benefits, probably by about two-thirds.  However, society should help the poorest and most vulnerable in our society with the most basic of needs whether or not they are able to work, and many are not able to work even if there was an easily available government jobs program.  The biggest irony about all of this is that the Republican Party was founded as the anti-slavery party in the 1850's, but now the Party of Lincoln has been co-opted by the South.  With the pending government shut-down and not paying the government debt also in question, because of G.O.P. shenanigans, the party is really going off the rails.

[revised on 9/21/13]

Mark is probably the only politician in Washington that had the temerity to keep the 2004 election shenanigans in the news as late as 2013 and to call out names. Help us solve the mystery of "The Other Curious Election of 2004" (WA 9th Congressional District U.S. Rep. primary) by contacting real journalists and asking them to look into it. Please, ask these journalists to use "Freedom of Information" requests to get to the bottom of this case. Elections are too important for shams to be ignored and for accountability to be neglected.

If possible, please, consider contributing to the Party of Commons by sending a check or money order ($10 recommended) to Mark Greene's Party of Commons or $10 to the U.S. Representative Campaign that will be on the ballot in 2014 (to Mark Greene for Congress); for either address, write to P.O. Box 612, Bellevue, WA 98009. Thank you!

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