Millionaire
lawmaker Stephen Fincher is pushing for cuts to food stamps and increases in
subsidies that will pad the Tennessee Republican's own bottom line.
I’ll bet that Mark
Twain, who wrote “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” would’ve
loved a current saga. I call it “The Jumping Congress Critter of Frog Jump.”
The critter’s name is
Representative Stephen Fincher. He’s a millionaire, agribusiness operator,
gospel singer, and tea party Republican who was elected to Congress in 2010
from the greater metropolitan area of Frog Jump, Tennessee.
Declaring “limited
government” to be his priority, the 40-year-old right-winger recently jumped
all over the food stamp budget, demanding that $20 billion (and 2 million
poverty-stricken families) be chopped out of the program.
In his attack, Fincher
cited an odd moral source to rationalize his stinginess toward America’s poor
families: The Bible.
“The one who is unwilling to work shall not
eat,” declared the Bible-thumping budget-whacker, quoting the Book of
Thessalonians. Of course, several passages in the Bible depict Jesus teaching
an exact opposite moral code — indeed, a heavenly duty of generosity toward the
poor. But Fincher the Austerian was not about to let Jesus trump the tea
party’s small-government dogma.
“We have to remember,”
the Frog Jumper lectured, that “this is other people’s money that Washington is
appropriating and spending.”
Piously put, sir. But
then, the Critter from Frog Jump suddenly leapt to another budgetary lily pad.
Now, the “limited government” ideologue became a croaking free-spender.
Guess what he’s
demanding? A $9 billion increase in a taxpayer subsidy program that protects the income of a few agribusiness outfits like his.
In fact, Fincher is
the second-largest recipient of farm subsidies in Congress, having taken at
least $3.5 million in “other people’s money” in the past dozen years. For more
on this hopping hypocrite, visit the Environmental Working Group’s website at
www.ewg.org.
OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is
a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. He's also editor of the
populist newsletter, The
Hightower Lowdown. OtherWords.org