Posted on 02/20/2012 3:05:01 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
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 families living in poverty. SNAP eligibility rules require that participants be at or below 130 percent of the federal poverty level.
Recent studies show that 49 percent of all SNAP participants are children (age 18 or younger), with almost two-thirds of SNAP children living in single-parent households. In total, 76 percent of SNAP benefits go towards households with children, 16 percent go to households with disabled persons, and 9 percent go to households with senior citizens.
Newt Gingrich’s attempt to paint Obama as the president who oversaw the largest increase of SNAP participation is inaccurate. It was President Bush, not President Obama who has that distinction. This stands to reason, as it was during President Bush’s administration that our country’s economy plummeted. Newt Gingrich’ race-baiting tactic is repugnant, of course, and he is just flat-out wrong. As Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-IL) so eloquently voiced on the floor of The U.S. House recently, “Hunger is color-blind. Of recipients whose race we know, 22 percent of SNAP recipients are African-American. And 34 percent are white. Hunger knows no race, or religion, or age or political party.”
Hunger in America is real. Programs such as SNAP, WIC, free- and reduced- school lunches, and summer feeding programs exists because there is a need. These are not fraud-ridden systems somehow sucking the life out of our budgets as some politicians would like you to believe. According to a recent USDA analysis, SNAP reached a payment accuracy of 96.19 percent in 2012 (the highest ever achieved by the program). Trafficking rates — the number of benefits exchanged for cash — are at 1 percent, according to 2008 statistics, the most recent available. There is always room for improvement, but the integrity of the SNAP program is solid.
As evidenced by no subsequent primary wins, America is not buying Newt Gingrich’s assault on children, families, disabled, or our senior citizens.
In a recent NPR interview, correspondent David Welna spoke to Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions from Alabama, and Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu from Louisiana. Per capita, Sessions’ Alabama is one of the top food stamp recipients in the nation; so is Louisiana. Sen. Sessions said, “I think it’s a policy of the administration, just get money out of the door to try to stimulate the economy, and not look closely at who’s getting it and why they’re getting it.” Sen. Mary Landrieu said, “It is blaming the victim, and it’s making a mockery of some of the most important, I think, social safety net programs in the country.” Welna asked about government freeloaders? Sen. Landrieu responded by suggesting Congress should “take away the special tax loopholes for the rich.”
Candidate Gingrich would never advocate for that. Take away tax loopholes for the wealthy? Blasphemous indeed. Hungry children, being hungry, families living from paycheck to paycheck, having a language barrier that limits your ability to navigate our system, being part of the working poor, struggling to find a job, or experiencing financial fear, all these are beyond the realm of reality for Newt Gingrich.
No, he can more easily identify with his patrons such as Sheldon Adelson, a casino mogul who donated 5 million dollars to Gingrich through a super PAC. Then his wife Miriam, quickly followed with a 6 million dollar donation. This was just before the South Carolina primary and we know who won the South Carolina primary.
All Democrat controlled inner-cities are the way they are because of crippling Democrat Party policies of social justice.
All I can say is FO on it being racial to call Obama the food stamp president.
It’s a factual title, because there are more people, as a percentage of the population, on food stamps.
Food is fundamental - but I work hard so I can buy it with my own money.
Only people of color are on food stamps? Well huh...I didn’t know that.
ZERO is the food stamp president, because HIS policies have put so many out of work. Food stamps are a last resort for many.
People used to sell their food stamps for drug money. I wonder how they address that need w/EBT cards or whatever you call them.
Short sighted author to not understand if Democrats really wanted to improve the private sector economy, they could have. All the real ideas have been Conservative solutions offered long ago, and the liberal ideas had disastrous results that were easily predictable.
Earning money to buy food-what a novel approach.
All Democrat controlled inner-cities are the way they are because of crippling Democrat Party policies of social justice.
And crippling dependence
Are Food Stamps Fattening? http://americanparser.wordpress.com/tag/john-stossel/
The United States Department of Agriculture, which states that not only has food stamp distribution increased by 60% from March 2008 to March 2011, but costs have increased a whopping 113% in three years (5)! And over the last 10 years, from 2001-2010, the same numbers, respectively, are 132% and 316% (6)! This means, effectively, that in 2010, this program required four times the money to serve twice the recipients than it did in 2001. In contrast, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics claims that the Consumer Price Index, often cited as, but an incomplete indicator of, the actual inflation rate, went up only 23.2% over that same 10 years (7).
So why have food stamp distribution costs gone up 184% in the last 10 years, when inflation, according to the horse’s mouth, has gone up less than 25%? That’s a good question, one that alarms critical thinkers like Mr. Stossel, and one that his opponents would prefer never occur to the general public. Mr. Stossel hasn’t won 19 Emmys and 5 awards from the National Press Club for excellence in consumer reporting because he is rash and thoughtless (8).
1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEBsZIJZ2ik
2 http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs311/en/index.html
3 http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2010/06/15/Poor-neighborhoods-linked-to-obesity/UPI-10841276649291/
4 http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2010/02/19/aje.kwp458.full
5 http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/34SNAPmonthly.htm
6 http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/SNAPsummary.htm
7 http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl (insert the variables $1, 2001, and 2010)
8 http://shared.web.emory.edu/emory/news/releases/2009/11/john-stossel-to-speak-at-emory-law.html
She writes this and then two short paragraphs later she writes that this can't be Obama's fault, that it's really Bush's fault. Pretty hard to take seriously what comes after that....
Why is the mere mention of food-stamp considered ‘racist’?
Only blacks get food-stamps? Only whites get food-stamps?
I think food-stamp is for the poor.
So it is more appropriate for them to call him anti-poor!
But he wants them to earn pay-checks! Is it ‘racist’ to encourage people to earn pay-checks?
Right now with Food Stamps - SNAP - bags of M&Ms, boxes of Captain Crunch, cartons of TastyKakes and bottles of Mountain Dew, Soft drinks, candy, cookies, snack crackers, and ice cream are food items and are therefore eligible items. http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/retailers/eligible.htm
The Left persists in calling conservatives anti-intellectual and anti-science.
I dare say this administration wants more dependency, quadrupling the evil of their crime against humanity.
Conservatives aren't lemmings over the cliff of "settled" Algore global warming science fraud or bought off like the gaggle of socialist professors who churn out the "correct numbers" to keep those grants rolling in and their benefactors in power.
Conservatives want less government and more prosperity.
Food stamp socialists want more government and redistribution of wealth. They want Greece.
Conservative solutions work every time and the Left can ill afford for that to be put into action. Think Wisconsin and how much money and muscle has poured into that state to tear down the policies the voters want (that Gov. Walker ran on and won) that ARE WORKING!
Food is Fundamental??????
No, WORK is fundamental. Work begets money. Money begets food. No work...no food...no sponging off workers...no welfare cheats.
How’s that?
I read their home page/about us, etc., and they started their career (1999) giving (as one of many recipients) to Antioch University.
That's all I needed to know.
It’s very simple. I see it every time I go to the supermarket here in the welfare hell-hole of South Texas.
First, the holder of the card needs to live in a “hive” of 3 or more welfare recipients (where they can pool their groceries) or be selling dope or acting as a “mule” for it for money.
Next, they go to the store with a shopping list for their “family” or friends and buy groceries for them. Then they sell them to the customers at 60 cents on the dollar and viola....PROFIT!
No one gives a damn and no one is monitoring them. You just have to be here to see it in action.
Of course mandated FOOD will be the next shoe to drop under ObamaCare. It’s already well on the way.
And of course it will be “correct and approved” food - to keep us healthy, courtesy of nanny state government, socialist think-tanks and university studies - as is being demonstrated in the headlines.
It will be the next “right” under Obama.
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