Welcome to another episode of Lurie Breaks It Down, a podcast where we dig deeply to connect the dots on the issues currently shaping our world.

I'm Lurie Daniel Favors, author, activist, attorney, and host of the Lurie Daniel

Favors show on Sirius XM's Urban View, Channel 126.

First things first, when the kids today say something like stop the cat, they basically

mean stop lying.

And I admit I had absolutely no idea

what the phrase meant the first time I heard our son use it. But it's a phrase that's basically

designed to call somebody out for lying, for being dishonest. It just so happens that the phrase

stop the cap could also be used to describe and to save one of the most important

social safety nets or poor people programs that this nation has ever made. But first, a story.

Many, many years ago, when I was a baby lawyer as a first year attorney, I worked for a corporate

law firm and I made a lot of money. That's not a flex. It's just that since I grew up as a first year attorney, I worked for a corporate law firm. And I made a lot of money. That's not a

flex. It's just that since I grew up as a poor kid, making this money was a really big deal for me.

And not just because I wasn't used to earning money like this, because frankly, I wasn't.

I was one of those kids who had to work three jobs to stay in school as a college student. And in

addition to cleaning apartments and selling my plasma, I could barely make ends meet. And it wasn't a

big deal because I was also one of those folks who had a lot of poor kid memories, the kind that

includes standing in line to get our family's ration of powdered milk, eggs and cheese

from government programs designed to help poor people get along. Yeah, it was big for those

reasons, but that really wasn't the only reason. The real reason making this money was a big

deal for me was because I was also learning to speak a new language. And that language

is called wealthy people's money. This was the first time that I ever knew what it was to

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