Assistance Programs Runs Short as Winter Approaches

• Author: Chris Remington
• Posted: 2024-01-03

The holiday season is here, which means that very soon the brunt of winter will be upon a large portion of America. This results in people paying a lot of extra money to heat their homes. However, in the current economy, millions of Americans cannot afford to heat their homes. Hundreds of thousands of Americans cannot even afford to live in a home and are homeless. One might assume that the government would step in with assistance programs to help people during these trying times, but the truth is that most of these programs are completely bankrupt for homeowners looking for utility assistance; and there aren't any real programs around to help combat homelessness.

This isn't a Republican vs. Democrat issue. This is a collective government issue. One of the reasons that California's homeless population is so large is that homeless people travel from cold-weather states so that they don't freeze to death on the streets. Their states aren't doing anything to help them either. The only assistance program that's currently working as designed in America is the SNAP program, and even that's taxed to its breaking point thanks to billions of dollars worth of fraud and misplaced funding.

Sadly, most Americans are too interested in bickering about the party they oppose being the bad guys, and ignoring the bad guys in their own party; and those that aren't political are likely too distracted by figuring out how to pay their bills. This gives the government a collective out. No one is holding a politician's feet to the proverbial fire for not helping poor people and the homeless. No one is clamoring in the streets for better government assistance programs, and they should be.
 

Accountability is Extinct

There used to be a time in America where citizens held politicians responsible for not doing what they said, or breaking a promise. George H. W. Bush famously said on stage once, "Read my lips: no new taxes," only to implement new taxes. Americans were angry and did not let that go. Bush lost in a landslide during his re-election bid, and all the polls said that breaking his promise was the reason people decided to vote against him. Things have certainly changed. Politicians now get up on a podium and lie to the American people, refusing to help the neediest among the population, and Americans no longer hold them accountable. It's okay if your team lies, as long as the other team doesn't win. That's polarization on a level that may never be repaired.

Newsom in California, Hochul in New York, Inslee in Washington, and many more; all of these state governors have promised to assist their most vulnerable populations, namely the homeless, and none of them have. What's worse is that their core voting base just doesn't care. The common sentiment: These politicians may lie, and they may ignore the poor, but at least they're not the other party. "At least we don't have fascism," people will gleefully shout online, as their governors lock them down, take away their freedoms, fill their neighborhoods with immigrants without a vote, and waste money while never helping citizens. "It's better than fascism," voters proudly proclaim, while shrugging their shoulders.

The largest issue here is that government officials are able to get away with not helping the citizens. They're able to get away with disappearing money, and with breaking their promises. If Americans banded together to collectively oust them from office, the people who replaced them would be scared not to follow the will of the people. America has become a country where the average citizen views an elected official as their leader, not as their representative.

What's ironic here is that democracy isn't supposed to have rulers. It's supposed to have elected representatives who perform the will of the people. Though the same people who spend their days shouting "democracy" the loudest always seem to ignore the fact that they don't live in one. The poorest people among you, the ones who suffer the most, have less help now than they've ever had in American history, and instead of starting new government assistance programs for them, the elected politicians instead tell you to be angry about insurrections and misinformation, while they misplace another few billion dollars that you never even hear about.

Until the power dynamics in America shift back in favor of the people, America's poorest are going to continue to suffer without any new programs to lift them out of poverty.