House Speaker Paul Ryan has been taking a page from his home-state governor, Scott Walker, in figuring out how to make life as humiliating and difficult and miserable as possible, or maybe it's the reverse, Walker taking his ideas for "welfare reform" from the sociopathic Ryan. At any rate, what is happening in Wisconsin is what they envision for the entire country by imposing working requirements, drug testing, and time limits on people relying on the safety net to survive. Consider the tenuous life of the Howett family: James, Nadine and their two children. They are homeless, have an old car that keeps breaking down, and are losing their foodstamps.
In February, Wisconsin passed a law prohibiting food stamp recipients from owning a car valued at more than $20,000. Just how the law would work was still unclear to him, leaving Howlett to worry whether he'd have to choose between food for his family and his only car. […]Their recent troubles started in November, when Nadine lost one job cleaning a suburban hospital while waiting to start another five blocks from her apartment. Then Howlett's car broke down, he had to dramatically cut back hours as a Lyft driver, and they couldn't afford rent anymore.
The eviction came next. They said they tried to apply for an emergency loan from the state but were disqualified because they were not receiving cash assistance at the time, even though they were still eligible for food stamps. […]
"You try to keep your spirits up because you don't want the kids to feel like something is wrong," Howlett said. "Then you start to spiral. That's what it's like in Wisconsin. Help is so close, and so far away."
Ryan and Walker would point to the fact that the church paid for their car repairs at one point as an example of the community stepping up. The community has stepped up remarkably in Wisconsin since the state implemented a series of laws restricting help. That's been the case since the state "cut spending on food stamps by 28 percent, from $1.2 billion in 2013 to around $867 million in 2017." The work requirements have led to about 25,000 people—out of the 700,000 total—to find work. But 86,000 stopped getting food stamps and didn't find jobs and the government just let them go, not following up to see what happened to them in this grand, cruel experiment. They've turned to food banks and churches, where the number of people need help—like the Howletts—has swelled.