THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

And Laurel County Kentucky is an example of the people that Republicans are hurting the most when they cut SNAP benefits.

“Coming in here helps me a lot because then I got enough food to do me till the 8th,” she said, referring to the date each month when her food stamp benefits (through SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) are renewed. “I have to have the food. I’m just too low.”

With the new provisions, McCoy will make peanut butter crackers to eat each night before bed to help control her diabetes. The produce and the meat, so expensive these days at the supermarket, she said, is a godsend. She will give the oatmeal to the family that lives next door in her apartment building.

“They’ve got four itty-bitty, little kids, the oldest one in the first grade,” she said. “Where I live, we take care of each other. And you know when someone don’t have no groceries. When you hear so-and-so don’t have nothing, well, you send something over there.”

In southeastern Kentucky, hardship and need seem to spring forth from the cracks and crevices of the lush green rolling hills; they line the dulcet tones of the people who matter-of-factly recount their struggles to stay afloat. For the last half-century, the conundrum of calcified, generational poverty has stumped policymakers, with the luckless denizens of Kentucky’s Appalachian Mountains one of its most enduring symbols.

Unlike urban areas that have also come to typify entrenched poverty, Kentucky’s 5th District is overwhelmingly white (98 percent). And unlike many of the other districts where constituents are heavily reliant on government programs like SNAP, it is represented by conservative politicians who have voted to dial back those programs, alleging fraud and individuals addicted to handouts.

It’s hard to imagine they are talking about McCoy, 62, who is among those who could not survive without federal help yet has seen a dramatic reduction in her benefits, from $200 to $82 a month.

McCoy's life followed the same contours of many living here in rural Appalachia. After she turned 18, she started working — 17 years on the assembly line at Ford Motor Co., six years in a hospital-supply factory, seven more at a plant where she sewed men’s underwear. By the time she was in her late 40s, McCoy’s body had begun to break.

In addition to diabetes, she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and declared legally blind; she suffers from neuropathy, a nerve disorder that causes a burning sensation in her feet. Her last job was as a waitress working for $2 an hour under the table and scraping together tips, but that was more than 10 years ago, when she was able to drive.

With disability payments and SNAP, McCoy can just get by.

And all things considered, they will likely still vote for Teabagger Hall Rogers and that Jackass Mitch McConnell who will try and cut more from SNAP and any other safety net benefits they receive.