No junk food for Gov. Haley

[Marokai Backbeat]

You literally cannot afford to sustain yourself in healthy foods on a food stamp budget. For this kind of policy to work, benefits will either have to be raised or the government stand up to big agriculture and reform the farm subsidy system to favor more fruits, vegetables, fish and chicken.

Neither of which either political party is willing to do.

You're right on all counts here, but let's not even try to accept the notion that there's genuine "reform" attempts at work here. This is almost certainly an attempt at reducing the effect of food stamps and sabotaging what is otherwise one of the most successful programs of the American welfare state, so it can be pointed to down the road as ineffective. If it happens to reduce spending on South Carolina's end and/or promote healthier eating habits (which it won't in 99.8% of people, it will just make buying things more complicated) that would be an almost entirely unintended benefit. This is ideologically motivated blind-cutting-around-the-edges-because-we-can't-abolish-the-whole-thing.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Sabotaging?   Food stamps would have more support if people were confident they weren't being wasted on doritos and soda.

And in my experience, people who have to live on a very limited food stamp budget do not waste a notable portion of that money on doritos and soda when given real shopping options. But please, continue to live in this world where we legislate on the basis of welfare queen myths. I do admire your naiveté, though; Republicans would gosh golly never legislate on meanspiritedness!

[Marokai Backbeat]

Sabotaging?   Food stamps would have more support if people were confident they weren't being wasted on doritos and soda.

And in my experience, people who have to live on a very limited food stamp budget do not waste a notable portion of that money on doritos and soda when given real shopping options. But please, continue to live in this world where we legislate on the basis of welfare queen myths. I do admire your naiveté, though; Republicans would gosh golly never legislate on meanspiritedness!

And I admire your obfuscation.  How the hell does any of that substantiate your claim about sabotage?

Because the same kind of people pushing this kind of "tell the poor to buck it up and live healthier" crap are the same folks who are trying to criminalize the implementation of a passed, ruled constitutional, healthcare program, something that is literally sabotage. The entire American conservative movement at this point has based most of it's foundations on drowning the government in it's bath water and "starving the beast"; they are ideologically motivated, not pragmatically motivated. They do not like the food stamp program because it is welfare.

They are not interested in genuine, good-hearted reform of it, and if they could get away with it they would try and Abortion-debate the whole program; raising the barrier to entry to such an extent that it's still there, but hard as hell to get anything out of. The Republican Party doesn't legislate against things they view as empirically bad in the most pragmatic way, they legislate against things they are ideologically and personally opposed to. There's a big difference in there that admittedly is lost on most casual American politics observers.