Republican Senator Wants Photo ID For Poor To Get Food
Louisiana Senator David Vitter doesn’t believe voter ID is enough. He wants food ID.
[Vitter] introduced legislation to require food stamp recipients to produce a valid photo ID every time they purchase food with their Electronic Benefits Transfer card. Under the Food Stamp Fraud Prevention and Accountability Act, anyone caught using someone else’s EBT card illegally would be banned from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
“Using a photo ID is standard in many day-to-day transactions, and most of those are not exclusively paid for by the taxpayer dollars,” Vitter said in a press release Wednesday. “Food stamps have more than doubled in cost since 2008 and continue to grow in an unsustainable way.”
Advocates for the poor believe this is harmful to struggling families.
“Many poor people do not have photo IDs, and it costs money they do not have to get them,” Deborah Weinstein, executive director of the Coalition on Human Needs, told The Times-Picayune on Wednesday. “Senator Vitter’s proposal will be especially tough on elderly and poor people who do not have the documents needed to get their photo ID, and who will struggle even to get to the necessary offices. They will wind up going without food.”
