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My family depended on SNAP benefits for ten years, to keep from starving to death. We also lived for about six years on the Home Energy Assistance Program, getting a discount on our gas and electricity to keep from freezing to death. We now make just a hair too much income to qualify for those anymore, and I\u2019m relieved. We badly needed those government programs, but they\u2019re a pain to be on, not just because the paperwork required can easily become a full-time job.<\/p>\n
While we were on SNAP and HEAP, I got a lot of remarks from the fine people of Steubenville telling me what they thought about people who needed a social safety net. The Steubenville highly conservative Catholics were the most vocal on the subject, but the good honest Appalachian townies gave me an earful too.\u00a0 Thanks to them, I know exactly what to say in response to the bombshell news about President Trump\u2019s income tax returns:<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/span>It\u2019s not that I\u2019m not faithful to Catholic Social Teaching, you understand. I just believe people like the Trumps should be grateful for charitable donations from their churches instead of my tax dollars.\u00a0 It makes me feel cheated, as a taxpayer, to line up at the grocery store for my cheap economical bone-in chickens I pay cash for, and watch the Trumps use government assistance for their overcooked steaks with ketchup.\u00a0 If we give a handout to the Trumps, they\u2019ll only spend it on drugs. I think it\u2019s terrible that we\u2019ve conditioned so many penthouse-dwelling trophy wives to think of one of their most basic parenting responsibilities is a job of the state. Of course I don\u2019t want Barron to go hungry. But we should perform the work of mercy of teaching Melania Trump how to buy nutritious affordable food (low-sugar cereals and PBJ).<\/p>\n Image via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/p>\n Mary Pezzulo is the\u00a0author of\u00a0Meditations on the Way of the Cross<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\nI have nothing against giving the poor a hand up. But I\u2019m afraid that a second Trump term could encourage him to depend on wasteful government funds instead of encouraging him to find honest work and become a contributing member of society.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\u00a0(Yes, the line about low-sugar cereals comes from a local Catholic mom, and I kept the receipt.)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/664\/2020\/09\/91264856_10157920441356287_3512409222283264000_o.jpg\")
<\/div>\n\n\nOur Lord granted me this house I live in because I have the courage to obey him, step out in faith, move to Steubenville, and never use birth control. If the Trumps had more faith they wouldn\u2019t need to rely on a government handout.\u00a0<\/span>I\u2019m pro-life and everything. But we ought to face that Donald Trump only had five children for the tax benefits, not for the good pious reasons I had mine.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\nHave the people of Manhattan considered how the value of their homes will go downhill now that everyone knows the Trumps are living on a tax return? No one wants to live in a community where the government foots the bill for food, housing and utilities for some while respectable people work hard for their money. You let one moocher in and there goes the neighborhood. Their culture of destruction will drag everything down. They\u2019re going to have to gentrify or pass an ordinance banning rentals. It\u2019s only good sense. It\u2019ll keep drugs and prostitution away from our children.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\u00a0Those people always seem to think they\u2019re entitled to other people\u2019s money. They need to learn the value of honest labor.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\u00a0There, I think I\u2019ve got that just about right. That\u2019s the loving Christian response, as loving Christians have told me for ten years.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\u00a0Or is it somehow different when the Trumps do it?<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n