This nation has gone completely slapped ass crazy and the House bill in the OP is one of many, many, many examples. I've never been on welfare or used food stamps, but I have spent the night at a Holiday Inn - which may be surprisingly similar. It seems many of you don't drink or have never been to a strip club. Laughingly it would seem that Congress hasn't either. I call bull**** on that notion. If any group of Americans knows liquor and strippers, it is the U.S. Congress. Who are they trying to fool? Well, actually they are trying to fool us. Judging from what I have read here Congress has been somewhat successful and/or some of y'all have been, ahem, disingenuous. I will agree that women may not know the ins and outs of strip clubs and I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
Mr. Invisible was right on the money. As to the rest of you, unless your strip club experience has been limited to backing flatbed truck into a 20 man army tent to use as a stage and drinking alcohol poured out of mason jars you very well know that strip clubs are not cheap. Here's what food stamps would buy you in a strip club: a glass of water, half of a pack of generic cigarettes and the embarrassment of trying to put 38 cents in a stripper's garter. That's about it. You know it, I know it and Congress knows it.
Beyond that, I don't know that strip clubs can or would accept food stamps. Why in the name of raw capitalism (something many of you masturbate to) would the owner of a strip club want to encourage poor folks with little or no money to rub elbows with high rollers? Let me help you with that answer - he wouldn't. You know that as well. Get the idea food stamp welfare idea out of your head. If you believe it, you're lying to yourself. Oh, sure, of course there's always going to be some anecdotal "proof" but it's anecdotal, mmkay?
The House bill is nothing more than a GOP circle jerk. A meaningless bill that was written and passed to appeal to the morally righteous, the church lobby and the racially prejudiced in America. Food stamp recipients are largely believed by the aforementioned to be lazy, uneducated, drug addicted, alcoholic, sexually depraved and non-white.
How do we know this? Well, there's enough historical evidence but more to the fact is what Congress didn't do, hasn't done and won't do: end business entertainment tax write-offs for lavish meals, golf outings at resorts - and, oh yeah, for alcohol. Of course you can no longer directly write off liquor, but for those of you who don't know it can easily be hidden in the total bill and is frequently. Holy Jack Daniels! That's YOUR money. Businesses are routinely avoiding contributing to federal taxes. The law for the most part permits them to write off food and entertainment - even strippers - and on top of that they cheat and lie an buy liquor. Outrage? Yo mama.
One final thing. I don't give a fat rat's ass if someone wants to buy alcohol with food stamps or welfare as long as they aren't buying cases of the stuff and reselling it. If a guy wants to have a beer at the end of the day, go for it. Most people on welfare or food stamps are not going to spend all their food money on alcohol. Telling them what they will and will not eat is social engineering - conservative social engineering. That's something we are seeing a hell of a lot these days.