Posted on 07/10/2012 7:01:16 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Tom Vilsack is one of the most important welfare administrators in the nation. Oh, yeah — he’s also secretary of agriculture.
Two-thirds of the Agriculture Department’s budget is devoted to welfare programs. The biggest is food stamps, which is now the nation’s second-largest welfare program after Medicaid. Its inexorable growth during the past decade, through good times and bad, is a testament to government’s self-generating expansion.
Asked what labor wanted, the great 20th-century union leader Samuel Gompers answered, “More.” The modern welfare state lives by the same credo. About 17 million people received food stamps back in 2000. Some 30 million received them in 2008. Roughly 46 million people receive them today. From 1 in 50 Americans on food stamps at the program’s national inception in the 1970s, 1 in 7 Americans are on them now.
The grinding recession accounts for much of the increase the past few years, but not for its entirety. Spending on food stamps doubled between 2001 and 2006, even though unemployment was low in those years. Even when the economy is projected to improve in the future, usage of food stamps will remain elevated above historic norms. Food Stamp Nation is here to stay.
One of its pillars is so-called categorical eligibility, which means that if someone is eligible for another welfare program, he is presumptively eligible for food stamps. In 2000, the Clinton administration issued regulations saying that merely getting a noncash welfare benefit could make someone eligible. Getting a welfare brochure or being referred to an 800 number for services is enough to qualify in almost all the states. In Vermont, receiving a bookmark with a telephone number and website for services is enough.
Categorical eligibility effectively wiped out the program’s old asset test (i.e., you couldn’t have $30,000 in the bank and get food stamps), although income limitations still apply. In the Obama stimulus, the work requirement was suspended, too, and hasn’t been restored. The requirement had discouraged young, able-bodied nonparents from utilizing the program; there are millions of them on food stamps. The bottom line is that government at all levels actively wants people on the program.
Newt Gingrich famously calls Barack Obama “the food-stamp president.” But the first president worthy of the moniker was George W. Bush. His administration brought a Madison Avenue element to the otherwise unreconstructed Great Society program. Not everyone who is eligible for food stamps knows it or wants to sign up. Bush began a recruitment campaign. In the same vein, the Obama administration is running radio ads hailing food stamps as a way to lose weight. At the local level, county governments spread the word and work to overcome residual cultural resistance to taking government benefits. The federal government pays $50 million in bonuses to states for signing people up.
That the food-stamps program is part of the farm bill — now up for debate in Congress — is itself a scam, an exercise in rural-urban logrolling that gives everyone an interest in seeing the bill pass.
As every level of government works to grow the program, attempts to scale it back are predictably savaged. When Jeff Sessions, a Republican senator from Alabama, advocated reforms to save $20 billion out of a $770 billion budget for food stamps during the next decade, he was portrayed as a Dickensian villain. New York Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand accused him of not caring about kids and insisted that food stamps are an engine of economic growth, since every $1 spent on the program allegedly generates $1.71 in economic activity. There’s nothing, apparently, that food stamps can’t do.
Needless to say, there are destitute people who need help. But the goal should be to reduce dependence on food stamps to historic levels after the recession, and restore the asset test, reestablish a work requirement, and implement a better system for income verification. When almost 15 percent of Americans are on food stamps, the government should reacquaint itself with two words: “too much.”
They want more people? Then...let’s ALL join up. /s (or not?)
Not to mention once the grocery industry sees the program responsible for nearly half of its sales, it will lobby for it like there’s no tomorrow.
The biggest man I know brags about getting Food Stamps. Its a debit card I think. He wears a 5X shirt and gets winded from standing longer than 5 minutes. He thinks its funny that we pay for his groceries.
“As every level of government works to grow the program, attempts to scale it back are predictably savaged.”
Of course!
So long as there are these infinitely escalating, gargantuan, readily and permanently accessible programs there are (will continue to be) layers upon layers of do-nothing, unaccountable and princely paid ‘positions’ to administer the programs!!
Handing our children and grandchildren THIS kind of future is inhumane, spiritually unwholesome and socially destructive.
REMEMBER:
“In spite of its foreground appearances, ethical Socialism [Socialism here means much of the modern theory of human rights] is not a system of compassion, humanity, peace and care, but one of will-to-power…” Oswald Spengler
AND…
“Liberalism is nothing more than the ideological disguise of the will to power of some groups who themselves could not be LESS Liberal”. Albert Camus
There’s a commercial on WABC radio: 2 black women laughing and joking about getting food stamps. It’s infuriating and I think it’s liberal racism, too.
RE: Surely supporters of these programs want people to be self-sufficient, right?
I’m a little slow today... you’re jesting right?
The food stamp program, part of the Department of Agriculture, is pleased to be distributing the greatest amount of food stamps ever.
Meanwhile, the Park Service, also part of the Department of Agriculture, asks us to “please do not feed the animals” because the animals may grow dependent and not learn to take care of themselves.
"Liberals define compassion by the number of people on welfare; conservatives define compassion by the number of people who no longer need it." - Jack Kemp
Obama has succeeded in turning the US into Great Britain, circa 1965. A whole lot of people on the dole. Only with all this stuff done online & with debit cards it’s far less apparent how far the slide has progressed.
Machines do most of the work these days, and a small but growing percentage of the population no longer has anything to offer the labor market that is worth minimum wage. The automation trend is only going to increase until 90% of us are on food stamps. To help people find happiness they need something meaningful to do, but that only means spending more money on them. Possibly we could automate make-work administration so it would be cheap enough. People would be paid to play basketball or make youtube videos all day. Life is going to be different.
And from another recent thread, 60 million Americans are now on Medicaid, and that would rise to 80 million if Obamacare were fully implemented. As long as we have that level of dependency, we have no hope of balancing the budget which includes $1 trillion in annual spending on the various support programs, and most of that trillion goes to working aged recipients and their dependents.
And then there are the long term problems with retirements programs, both government run and in the private sector.
The conclusion would be, since they know that “feeding” the welfare class breeds dependence,
that they want dependence.
But, we all knew that. It’s just that the left will deny this all day long, all while knowing that that is exactly the goal.
It's no longer just about need. Headlines in just the last month:
USDA combats ‘mountain pride,’ self-reliance to boost food stamp rolls
"A 2011 Hunger Champions Award document reveals that local assistance offices have been rewarded for “counteracting” pride and pushing more people to sign up for benefits. "
USDA suggests food stamp parties, games to increase participation
USDA: FOOD STAMPS WILL HELP YOU LOOK YOUR BEST
States try to increase food stamp benefits for their residents (Gaming the system)
States seeking a larger share of the nearly $80 billion a year the federal government hands out for food stamps have resorted to several practices that some lawmakers say are abuses of the system:
—Fourteen states and the District of Columbia make use of the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. Paying people as little as $1 a year for heating assistance, even if they don’t have a heating bill, automatically qualifies them for greater food stamp benefits. Critics say that can result in households getting up to $100 extra a month in food stamps....
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