Meet my TeaBagger - Shutdown Edition
Hard workA Florida Republican pushing to overhaul the food stamp system toils to win over a divided Congress
Written by Eli Saslow
Photos by Michael S. Williamson
Published on September 24, 2013
"The congressman had been called a "starvation expert" by analysts on TV and a "monster" by colleagues in the House of Representatives. Protesters had visited his offices carrying petitions demanding he resign. And now, six months into his crusade to overhaul the food stamp program, Rep. Steve Southerland (R-Fla.) departed the Capitol to address his most wary audience yet: the people whose government benefits he hoped to curtail.
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"The event was listed on his schedule as a "Poverty Tour," and Southerland had invited a dozen Republican policy experts to join him. They boarded a bus provided by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and traveled across Washington to a job training center, where three homeless men idled outside. Southerland stood at the front of the bus to address his colleagues. He looked like the funeral director he had been before running for Congress in 2008 - shoes polished, suit pressed, eyes solemn, head bowed as if in prayer. "This is an important moment for us," he said. If only his tough-love message could resonate with the unemployed, then maybe he could win over a divided Congress.
"What we are fighting for is a cultural shift," Southerland told his colleagues on the bus. "The explosion of food stamps in this country is not just a fiscal issue for me. This is a defining moral issue of our time."
Southerland’s food stamp proposal, which on Thursday the House narrowly voted to approve, would require able-bodied adults to work or volunteer at least 20 hours each week in order to receive government food assistance. "It’s the simple solution," he said in March at a news conference introducing the idea. But in the months since, he has learned that no idea is simple in Washington, especially not one that would fundamentally alter a program that has tripled in size during the past decade, growing to support a record 47 million people at a cost of $80 billion each year.
More (& PHOTOS too!) at http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2013/09/24/hard-work/
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Tell the mega corporations to bring our off shored white collar and blue collar manufacturing jobs back to this country. Pay a living wage and start paying taxes instead of hiding them in banks off shore.
This morning I called his office and suggested that Mr. Southerland buy himself a violin so he could emulate Nero. His staffer had no clue what I was talking about so I had to explain about Emperor Nero fiddling while Rome burned.
Here, Southerland, you embarrassment to Florida: 
they're BRILLIANT! 
During his first term I phoned his Panama City office quite often - guy there thought I was THE PRESS!!! I have no idea why he thought that but I eventually decided to run with it for funz! 
The Tallahassee office never had ANYTHING - ANYTHING!!! It was as though they had a temp service to answer the phone.
All I wanted was to go to a town hall. He keeps those TOP SECRET until the last minute.
What a douche!