Food Stamps Help Poor In Mon Valley

All Things Considered:

McKeesport has been in bad shape ever since the steel industry left in the late 1980s, taking with it thousands of good-paying jobs.
Today, the city — which Santorum once represented in Congress — is a shadow of its former self. Downtown offices are shuttered and abandoned, as are hundreds of homes. The population, once 55,000, is down to 19,000. Many of those who remain are unemployed or underemployed. The poverty rate is twice the national average.
Laurie MacDonald was born here and now runs Womansplace, a center for victims of domestic violence.
"It was a thriving town at one point," says MacDonald. "What's mostly left in town are human-services organizations and government organizations, like the Department of Welfare."
She says many here rely on government support, not because they want to but because, in many ways, they're stuck. They're either unemployed or don't earn enough to get by on their own. And they're too poor to move.

I can't understand the Republican war on the poor.  Do people really think that poor folks who get government assistance are better off than people with decent paying jobs who pay income tax?  Personally, I think the Gingrich-style attacks on food stamps work with a lot of Republican voters because they reflexively think of black people when they think of government poverty programs.  I don't understand why people seem to think that people poorer than them are living a much more comfortable life than they are.  If that is the case, why don't they try to get fired and make a go of it on public assistance?  Pride?  Do they think that poorer folks don't also have pride?  Do they think most of those folks love being on welfare?  I just don't know, but giving Gingrich a standing ovation for calling Obama "the food stamp President" seems pretty classless to me.