I spent last week as a participant in a national fraud investigators conference. One of the program being scrutinized for fraud, of course, is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly and still popularly known as the Food Stamp program.

This program provides financial assistance for purchasing food to low- and no-income people living in the U.S. It is a federal aid program, administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The benefits are distributed by individual U.S. states.

Mostly due to the terrible economic conditions resulting from the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 and the unemployment it triggered, the number of people on food stamps and the individual cost have increased substantially. While we paid out $28.6 billion in 2005, this rose to $74.6 billion in 2012.

Due to these eligibility changes, food stamp program costs have grown much more rapidly than many other safety net programs.

The GOP blasts Obama as being the “food stamp president” and perhaps he is. But I believe it is not because he likes to give away tax money. It’s because our country’s economic conditions have changed drastically and rapidly after 2008. Many food stamp recipients are people who simply can’t find any jobs. Not all of them are lazy moochers.

Some are veterans, those young people we sent overseas to fight wars. When they come back they have no opportunities to get back into the work force.

Some food stamp recipients are young people who work in federal programs as interns, while they are waiting for a better economy, serving their country in the AmeriCorps program at sub-minimum-wage pay, doing in some cases hard labor like building houses or maintaining trails in National Parks.

While we are talking about this $74 billion we are spending, let’s put it in perspective. How much is $74 billion a year?

One obvious example is the cost of the war in Afghanistan today. We’re spending $6 billion on that war – PER MONTH. Some of that money goes to ammunition (profits back to the military industrial complex), support and logistics (Halliburton), fuel (big oil), and of course greasing palms in a corrupt society where agents walk about with briefcases of cash buying off one warlord against another one.

$6 billion a month is conveniently $72 billion a year, just about the size of the entire U.S. food stamp program.

I haven’t heard many tea party whiners complain about this money we are spending to mess around in another country we have no business in. But they are quick to denigrate their own neighbors back in the U.S who can’t find jobs because entire businesses shut down, veterans that came back from the war without any tangible prospects and young people getting out of college with degrees and no place to go.

A country where the government is hostage to big business interests will eventually create a deeper cliff between those who have and those who have not.

A country shows its true values by where it spends its money, by what it focuses on, by its deeds, not by what hypocritical religious dogma it spouts.

A country that beats up on its own citizens has no hope.

We must create new hope by new initiatives, by education and by focusing on our young people.