Free Republic

One in seven Americans are on food stamps, but the government is pushing to enroll more — in many instances working to overcome Americans’ “pride,” self-reliance or failure to see a need. “Our common goal is to increase participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,” the United States Department of Agriculture explains on its “Outreach Toolkits” page. “Our purpose is to ensure that those going through difficult times can feed their families healthy, nutritious food. By working as a team, we can accomplish these goals.” The USDA has adopted a range of strategies and programs designed to bring more people...

The number of people receiving food stamps hit a record high during the recent recession and remains high. But that has not been the case for welfare. In some states, welfare participation rates have actually decreased over the past few years. Equally surprising is the fact that less than one-third of the federal and state money currently spent on welfare is actually given to people as cash assistance. The rest is spent on specialized services such as child care, child welfare and teen pregnancy counseling, but the government really doesn’t know how these funds are used and who benefits. “We’ve...

A convenience store clerk who was fired recently for refusing to sell cigarettes to a customer trying to pay for them with state welfare benefits has been fired, but her story has gained traction in local and national media. According to press reports, Jackie Whiton was working at a C.N. Brown Big Apple convenience store recently when a man in his 20s attempted to purchase cigarettes using an electronic benefit transfer card, which is issued to families in New Hampshire and Maine who are on the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF program. Whiton, a six-year employee of the...

While spending on the food stamp program has increased 100 percent under President Barack Obama, the government continues to push more Americans to enroll in the welfare program. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has embraced entire promotional campaigns designed to encourage eligible Americans to participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps. A pamphlet currently posted at the USDA website encourages local SNAP offices to throw parties as one way to get potentially eligible seniors to enroll in the program. “Throw a Great Party. Host social events where people mix and mingle,” Biden: Economy a...

Jackie Whiton, a six-year employee of the Big Apple, said she was fired after a dispute with her boss over accepting EBT cards as payment for cigarettes. I gave two weeks' notice and tried to bow out gracefully," said Whiton, of Antrim. "But the next day, I was fired." Whiton said she declined to accept an EBT card as payment for a package of cigarettes. The Electronic Benefit Transfer cards are used by state benefits departments to issue cash to recipients, and they can be used like debit cards. Whiton said her boss told her she can't refuse to sell...

Although former House Speaker and presidential candidate Newt Gingrich was smeared as “racist” by many Democrats and members of the main stream media for declaring Barack Obama “the food stamp president,” it turns out that, according to the USDA, being a “food stamp president” is really hip. In fact, the nation’s agricultural agency says, in a recent video ad, that signing up for food stamps can make you look and feel your best. --snip-- Almost 48 million people received food stamps in 2011, an increase from the 28.2 million who received the welfare benefit in 2008. The cost to taxpayers...

Jackie Whiton, age 65, had worked as a cashier at the Big Apple convenience store in Peterborough, N.H., for years. But then a couple of weeks ago she committed a firing offense. She refused to allow a welfare recipient to use his EBT card to buy a pack of smokes. How dare a taxpayer say no to a member of the non-working class? This is verboten in ObamaÂ’s America. So she was fired. ThatÂ’ll teach her. The gimme guy was a young man, about 20, and when he asked for cigarettes, Jackie Whiton handed them to him but asked for...

Sen. Jon Tester was not allowed to bring an amendment inserting his Sportsmen’s Act of 2012 into the bill. That bill combined 20 Democratic and Republican bills for improving hunter access to public lands, funding shooting ranges, and supporting fish and bird habitat programs. It was among about 300 proposed amendments that Senate leaders pared down to 70. ... The bipartisanship seen in the Senate may be less evident in the House, where conservatives are certain to resist the bill’s costs, particularly for food stamps. Food stamp spending has doubled in the past five years, and beneficiaries have grown from...

The Senate on Thursday completed a five-year, half-trillion-dollar farm bill that cuts farm subsidies and land conservation spending by about $2 billion a year but largely protects sugar growers and some 46 million food stamp beneficiaries. The 64-35 vote for passage defied political odds. Many inside and outside of Congress had predicted that legislation so expensive and so complicated would have little chance of advancing in an election year. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell called it "one of the finest moments in the Senate in recent times in terms of how you pass a bill."

Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson has introduced a motion to send the Agriculture, Reform, Food and Jobs Act back to committee and divide it into two separate bills to be considered in two separate votes.

The next time someone moans about Washington "austerity," tell them about the Senate's food stamp votes on Tuesday. Democrats and a few Republicans united to block even modest reform in a welfare program that has exploded in the last decade and is set to spend $770 billion in the next 10 years. Yes, $770 billion on a single program. And you wonder why the U.S. had its credit-rating downgraded?

America's welfare state is about to suffer a double whammy of epic proportions. On one hand, extended unemployment benefits are now running out at a pace of 100,000+ per week, as more and more American's lose eligibility for Komrade Samov's 99-week sponsored vacation, meaning millions of Americans heretofore sitting comfortably on their couch playing Call of Duty and collecting $400 a week will now start having to think for a change - never a good thing for any regime that relies on its electorate to be docile as drunk and fat Hindu cows. And now this: "New York would prohibit...

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....

In these tough economic times, millions of Americans have leaned heavily on food stamps. This government assistance program also has done well by some of the country’s biggest banks and corporations.   An investigation by the advocacy group Eat Drink Politics found banks and businesses have reaped multi-million-dollar contracts from the government to administer food stamp programs at the state level. Yet, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), doesn’t make public how much profit the banks and other businesses earn by acting as government agents for the program.   One significant beneficiary...

These data are right out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Office of Management and Budget, Standard and Poor’s Labor Statistics, the Joint Committee on Taxation, and the US Census, among others.

These data are right out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Office of Management and Budget, Standard and Poor’s Labor Statistics, the Joint Committee on Taxation, and the US Census, among others.

It’s a Massachusetts Rorschach test. In 2009, the state unemployment rate peaked at 8.7 percent. It’s now down to 6.3 percent — a 28 percent drop. Meanwhile the number of Bay Staters on food stamps has jumped from 720,000 to more than 850,000, a 15 percent increase. Here’s the test question: Is that a good thing, or bad? Look, the economy still stinks, but it doesn’t stink as bad as it did in 2008-2009. And yet, from 2007 to 2011, spending on food stamps went up an astonishing 135 percent. And it’s still going up. How does this make sense?...

Benjamin Franklin, statesman and signer of our Declaration of Independence, said: "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." John Adams, another signer, echoed a similar statement: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." Are today's Americans virtuous and moral, or have we become corrupt and vicious? Let's think it through with a few questions. Suppose I saw an elderly woman painfully huddled on a heating grate in the dead of winter. She's...

It’s admirable that Mario Batali, owner of the most expensive restaurant on the planet Earth, cares that everyone has enough to eat. To prove he cares—that he is down with the 1% (the bottom 1% that is)—Batali has carefully lowered himself down into the gutter (actually, for him I believe the gutter is “up”) with the 1 in 7 American families on Food Stamps so that he can walk a mile in their diet. In a paean to the portly chef and his magnanimity, the Associated Press writes: The chef, his wife and their two teenage sons are eating for...

Winding down his media blitz from the Food Stamp Challenge, Mario Batali appeared on last night’s The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell to defend his decision to feed his family of four on a food stamp budget, which is to say: $31 dollars per person per week, which breaks down to $1.48 per meal. His biggest lesson? “Shopping at more than one store was the key to understanding it,” Batali said to his disciple O’Donnell, live from the kitchen of Babbo (which I am surprised can handle a live media feed, unless there’s also a secret green screen room at...

When Jody Rodiger of Manchester volunteered to help Connecticut's needy buy food, she never thought she would one day also depend on food stamps. "I advocated for it for years, I knew the program inside and out. But I never thought it would be for me," Rodiger, 50, said. Like many who've recently swelled the ranks of the SNAP, as the food stamp program is now known, Rodiger is a middle-class professional. She and millions of other American victims of the recession suddenly found they could not afford food. "It was a lifesaver," Rodiger said of the food stamp program....

A Seattle couple alleged to have been drawing government assistance while living in a $1.2 million Lake Washington home has been charged with defrauding the government and is expected to plead guilty. Accusing the couple of stealing more than $115,000 meant to subsidize housing for the poor, federal prosecutors have filed felony theft charges against chiropractor David Mark Silverstein and Lyudmila Shimonova. Both are expected to appear in U.S. District Court next week to answer the felony charge of theft of government funds, which was filed by information Tuesday. Attorneys for both defendants said Tuesday their clients will be pleading...

"We're headed in the right direction. Unemployment continues to drop and those people who are unemployed, they're not going to be voting for the party who wants to cut their benefits, cut access to food stamps, cut job training," Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-PA) said on MSNBC's Al Sharpton program.

Gov. Deval Patrick, who was first briefed on a long-running EBT-abuse investigation only hours before last week’s raids, defended the taxpayer-funded program again yesterday. Questioned about whether last week’s 53 arrests had changed his view of the program’s problems, Patrick responded: “This is a really important program. I think most people know that it provides modest benefits that help people with their housing, their employment, their education needs and obviously when that’s abused, that’s concerning to me, as it is to anyone else.” In recent weeks, Patrick had dismissed the Herald’s coverage of the welfare card issue as “the Herald...

Not sure if this a company wide policy or a store policy for the store I was at. Standing in line a gal with her 2 kids was checking out. didn't think much of it. She presents her coupons and a target 5% off card from the pharmacy rewards.. what the cashier said after that floored me. "I'm sorry. You can't use these with a ebt card" She had 40 dollars worth of discounts. At this point I was tempted to head to another check out lane but I waited to see how it would play out. Manager comes over...

Everyone in agriculture knew there would be substantial cuts in the new farm bill. Most agricultural organizations had signaled that a “proportional cut” would be acceptable. We’ve realized that preserving the most essential element of the legislation – crop insurance – would be a realistic goal. Toward that end, the House Agriculture Committee had been working with what farmers believe is a realistic number – $23 billion in cuts to the farm bill, with $15 billion of it coming from the commodity title. Recently, the House Budget Committee threw out a new and completely unrealistic number of $181 billion in...

Several days after state Rep. Russell E. Holmes (D-Boston) pleaded for EBT card reform at a State House press conference last week, he was hit with another reminder of the deep flaws in the system. Holmes was at the Roxbury Stop & Shop by Grove Hall last Sunday when someone approached him asking if he wanted to buy the man’s EBT card. “His price was 50 cents on the dollar,” Holmes said. “It’s not a surprise to me.” Holmes has spent the last few months on an EBT card commission trying to reform the system. “It’s something that’s prevalent,” Holmes...

Kimball Clark, 45, was locked up Friday on drug-dealing charges — again — when he was overheard using his one phone call to ask the person on the other end of the line to “get my EBT card and go to the ATM and get the money to bail me out, get me outa here tonight,” according to a Boston police report.

WASHINGTON - A study by the Agriculture Department has found that food stamps, one of the country's largest social safety net programs, reduced the poverty rate substantially during the recession. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, reduced the poverty rate nearly 8 percent in 2009, the most recent year included in the study, a significant impact for a social program whose effects often go unnoticed by policymakers. "SNAP plays a crucial, but often underappreciated, role in alleviating poverty," said Stacy Dean, an expert on the program with the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington-based research group that...

Flaunting food stamps almost seems to be a trend. First, Mr. EBT released his now-infamous rap. Shortly thereafter, girls followed suit with their own version. Now, a night club in Montgomery, Ala., is hosting its very own “Food Stamp Friday” party. On April 6, the Rose Supper Club in North Montgomery will offer a discounted cover charge — and free shots — to any patron who flashes a food stamp card at the door. Not surprisingly, some Montgomery residents aren’t happy about the way the party seems to glamorize a life on government assistance.

This is an appalling and nauseating example of why Obama is accurately being referred to as the "Food Stamp President" (I believe Newt Gingrich coined that term). Video below shows, then discusses, an advertising campaign the Obama regime is running that actually pushes people, who otherwise may not want or need to, onto the nation's food stamp program. The TV ad even pushes the benefits of "better nutrition" and insinuates that you'll look better and be more active, as reasons to get on food stamps; not need, loss of employment, etc...

Alexandra Pelosi appeared on Real Time tonight with two purposes: to defend the video she filmed of voters in Mississippi that aired on the show last week, and to air a brand-new video that Bill Maher admitted would probably anger liberals in the same way the aforementioned video angered conservatives. For her new video, Pelosi spoke to African-American welfare recipients in New York. There was far less laughter during this piece than the Mississippi one (which Pelosi pointed out after it played), but there were still some revealing moments contained therein. One of the men lined up outside the welfare...

Months after a new Kansas policy cut food stamps going to thousands of children, some lawmakers are mounting efforts to help those families. But they’re finding it’s difficult when the issue involves families with some members who are living in the country illegally. Legislative leaders don’t appear eager to tackle any illegal immigration issue in an election year. Earlier this week, senators in Topeka proposed an amendment to the Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services budget that ultimately could have restored some aid to the children who are U.S. citizens but whose parents are illegal immigrants. But on Wednesday, the...

Everybody is outraged by the fact that she has a lot of money now – $700,000 after taxes, apparently – but will stay on the government dole. What struck me was the fact that she was spending money on lottery tickets while on food stamps. If you have money to gamble, why does the government have to feed you? (VIDEO AT LINK) Really, this is just a “sign of the times” for where our society is at right now. We have an entire political party on the left that, as part of their 2012 campaign platform, is claiming that Republicans...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijWu7lK7Hss State Rep. Mary Franson has apologized and removed a YouTube video that compared Minnesota’s food stamp program to “feed(ing) the animals.” It started Friday, when Franson, a first-term Republican from Alexandria, posted a week-in-review video on YouTube. She ran through the news about the new state budget forcast and ended with a plea to end child sexual abuse. In between, at about the two-minute mark, she turned to the welfare reform. “I'll read you this little funny clip that we got from a friend. It says, 'Isn't it ironic that the food stamp program, part of the Department...

From now thru November 2012 this should be required weekly or at least monthly reading – BY ALL WHO VOTE!!! Did you notice who Obama threatened when he wasn’t getting his way on raising the debt ceiling? He threatened to not pay: Social Security Retirees, Military Retirees, Social Security disability and Federal Retirees. Now.. Let this sink in really good –

The United States announced a diplomatic breakthrough with North Korea Wednesday. Under an agreement reached in direct talks in Beijing last week, North Korea has agreed to allow the return of nuclear inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, and has agreed to implement a moratorium on long-range missile tests, nuclear tests, and nuclear activities at Yongbyon, including uranium enrichment activities, the State Department said. In return, the United States will provide North Korea with a large food aid package.

On January 21 Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina Primary. But he did it, in part, by using racist rhetoric, characterizing President Obama as “the best food stamp president in American history.” Since then, he has continued to drive this distortion hoping it will somehow resonate with voters. It’s not likely to work, because most Americans understand that food is fundamental. Presidents do not put people onto the food stamp rolls. People, predominately people with children to feed, become eligible for food stamps. The food stamp program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, is a critical safety net for...

Although Michigan’s unemployment rate has been dropping lately, there’s been a disturbing counter-trend developing over the last decade. One in five people in the state received government food assistance in 2011, up from 1 in 16 in 2001. Michigan has seen the number of food assistance recipients climb dramatically during the same time period, increasing from 623,335 in 2001 to 1.9 million in 2011, according to James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. The state’s population has remained about the same over the last decade. There were 9.9 million people in 2001 and...

Madison - A new audit has found more than $300,000 in suspicious out-of-state spending in the state's food assistance program for the poor. Most out-of-state spending was found in neighboring states. But the audit also found purchases made in every state in the country and other U.S. territories such as $515 spent in the Pacific island of Guam. The state's $1.1 billion a year FoodShare program is required by federal rules to allow recipients to use their benefits to buy food in other states, and the audit notes that in many cases that can be for legitimate reasons such as...

Over the last three years, the number of Americans on food stamps has skyrocketed by two-thirds and stands at a record-high 46 million citizens, or one out of every seven people in the United States. Despite the historic rise in food stamp use, however, the Obama Administration believes not enough people are receiving food stamps who should be and is offering $75,000 grants to groups who devise “effective strategies” to “increase program participation” among those who have yet to sign up...

"First of all, I don't put people on food stamps. People become eligible for food stamps. Second of all, the initial expansion of food-stamp eligibility happened under my Republican predecessor, not under me. Number three, when you have a disastrous economic crash that results in 8 million people losing their jobs, more people are going to need more support from government."

President Obama: I’m going to win reelectionBy Amie Parnes - 01/26/12 07:07 PM ET President Obama said in no-uncertain terms on Thursday that he will win his re-election campaign in November. Asked by ABC News’s Diane Sawyer if he was going to win, Obama replied: “Yes.” He also told Sawyer he would "fight with every fiber of my being" for a second term. "How much do you want it?" Sawyer asked Obama in the interview. "Badly," Obama said. "Because I think the country needs it." Just a few months ago Obama described himself as an underdog in the 2012 election....

Ann Coulter has been a Romney supporter for a long time, and she's a brawler; it's no surprise that she would come away from the SC primary swinging. What's unexpected is who she's targeting. Instead of diligently investigating why Newt won, she has turned her acerbic tongue loose on the electorate instead. The very next morning after the primary, she suggested that republicans have become 'the mob' on Fox News, and has implied there and elsewhere that voters are stupid for backing Gingrich just because he can deliver an insult to the MBM. Along with a host of other sarcastic...

Rep. Allen B. West took to the airwaves Monday to defend former House Speaker Newt Gingrich against charges from a top Democrat that Mr. Gingrich used racist “code words” to fuel his double-digit win over the weekend in the South Carolina Republican primary. Rep. James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, one of the top-ranking Democrats in the House, and black activist Al Sharpton have been sharply critical of Mr. Gingrich’s repeated references to President Obama as “the food-stamp president.” But Mr. West, a tea party conservative who is the first black Republican elected to Congress from Florida since 1873, said...

  Who Are the Real Racists, Newt and Rick, or Juan and Chris? David C. Stolinsky Jan. 23, 2012 I used to work at a major university medical center. One of my most respected colleagues was a pediatric hematologist. She was an expert on sickle-cell disease, which afflicts mainly blacks. It causes repeated painful episodes, chronic anemia, and premature death. She established a clinic for these patients. One day a liberal activist wandered in, looking for trouble. That’s what activists do. The activist noted that almost all the patients in the clinic were black children, teenagers, and young adults....

We hear a lot about Speaker Gingrich going to the Basilica Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, the biggest Catholic church in the country, to hear his wife sing in the massed choir that performs there. But this is not what generally goes on in Catholic churches across this country and around the world. What goes on is that ordinary men and women come to those churches hungry, and confess their sins, and hear a story about Jesus, and then are fed, week, after week, after week. Nobody ever tells us that we’re lazy, that we need to get...

Pedro moved to the Kansas City area about 13 years ago and has held the same job for 11. Though he sometimes struggles to pay bills, he knows most people think he should receive no public aid. He’s an illegal immigrant. He doesn’t deserve handouts. He understands that. “I’ve never asked for anything for myself,” said Pedro, who didn’t want his last name used to protect his family. “Never. I just work. Work hard.” A new debate swirling around Kansas, though, isn’t about Pedro. It’s about two of his three children. They were born here, and one day they will...

Madison - Gov. Scott Walker's administration is seeking more authority from the federal government to go after fraud in the state's food assistance program. The state currently has the power to investigate fraud committed by participants in FoodShare, the $1 billion program largely funded by the federal government that serves as the successor to food stamps. But as of now only the federal government has the authority to pursue fraud cases against retailers, something that Wisconsin officials want to change.

I was watching the debate last night with my wife and daughter.  At ten years of age, she does occasionally surprise with her interest in current events. She sat quietly as bed time approached, with quiet being a rarity at that time of night, and listened as Juan Williams injected race into a question about hard work. Speaker Gingrich, you recently said, “Black Americans should demand jobs, not food stamps.” You also said, “Poor kids lack a strong work ethic,” and proposed having them work as janitors in their schools. Can’t you see that this is viewed, at a minimum, as...