101M Americans Get Food Aid from Federal Gov’t; More Than the Number of Private Sector Workers
The number of Americans receiving subsidized food assistance from the federal government has risen
to 101 million, representing roughly a third of the U.S. population
That means the number of Americans receiving food assistance has surpassed the
number of private sector workers in the U.S.
- See more at: 101M Americans Get Food Aid from Federal Gov’t; More Than the Number of Private Sector Workers | CNS News
Interesting read and considering the number of folk out of work or underemployed, not surprising either. It's easy to only look at just one side of the Food Stamp or for that matter any welfare program and cast judgement. Use to be standard fare on my part so I've been there, done that. But from my own experience I know how so few will never actually follow the money and discover the benefactors of welfare is not the one sided picture we often think that it is.
It is true that in the last 4 to 5 years, food stamp costs have doubled and it's also true that on some level part of the cause is the economic situation many find themselves in. But how did we even get the food stamp program in the first place? Was it really to help the starving and huddled masses among us? Well not exactly.
Originally conceived as a means to prop up sagging crop prices to support American farmers, the Food Stamp Program, now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, has exploded into a welfare program that costs tax payers a record $75.67 billion in 2011.
Almost everyone has heard this story, but few realize that only three corporations have cornered the market for providing SNAP services to the needy and destitute.
Government Accountability Institute Report:
Profits from Poverty, How Food Stamps Benefit Corporations (page 4)
Continue reading the Food Stamp history and you'll see via executive order or legislation that regardless of political party, everyone on some level was eating on this cake. Even the Reagan Revolution of the 80's. And the Bush and Company who held the 3 branches of gov't was an equal player too.
Former President
George W. Bush expanded the program as part of the 2002 farm bill, Congress voted to expand it again in 2008, and Obama included extensions in his 2009 stimulus package. The system has become more accessible to more people, swapping out coupons for a debit card-like system and easing requirements.
source
Even the
Heritage Foundation admits the growth in Food Stamps is across the board.
Another “fact,” according to the author, is that much of the growth in food stamp costs is due to the recession and is temporary.
That’s partially true. Food stamp spending has roughly doubled in the past four years, and part of this is clearly due to the recession. However, food stamp spending has been
on an upward climb since the program began back in the 1960s. In the decade prior to the recession, total government food stamp spending nearly doubled, from $19.8 billion in 2000 to $37.9 billion in 2007.
Taking the GOP faithful's argument that the Bush years was a truly booming economy (and then Obama killed it), why did the Bush White House and the GOP controlled Congress feel it necessary to double Food Stamp spending? Maybe the better question would be, in what form of welfare was this doubling of spending actually presenting itself and to whose benefit? Hmmm!
To understand in the direction you should start to look rather than always looking where they want you to look, I'll leave you with 2 quotes. The first is quoted as the leadoff to the Government Accountability Institute's Report and the 2nd is from the father of the modern contemporary Conservative movement in one the late Irving Kristol, father of Weekly Standard/Fox News Bill Kristol. When you grasp the first, the 2nd should be a tipping point for an Ah-Ha moment unless you want to just continue to be dishonest with yourself.
"Perhaps the greatest, if not the only difficulty, which will arise against the adoption of this New Federal System of Government, will be made by those ambitious citizens, in the different States, who either now are in power, or who will practice their political wiles on the ignorant and unsuspicious part of the people, in order to obtain their own private purposes.
It is a lamentable consideration, that men of this stamp too frequently, by the folly and blindness of the people, are put in the exercise of such offices as give them a very dangerous degree of influence.
Hence the social compact is often violated, and sometimes dissolved."
Daily Advertiser
, September 24, 1787
[The Republican] party has never fully reconciled itself to the welfare state, and therefore has never given comprehensive thought to the question of what a conservative welfare state would look like. . . .
The idea of a welfare state is in itself perfectly consistent with a conservative political philosophy–as Bismarck knew, a hundred years ago. In our urbanized, industrialized, highly mobile society, people need governmental action of some kind if they are to cope with many of their problems: old age, illness, unemployment, etc. They need such assistance; they demand it; they will get it. The only interesting political question is: How will they get it?
This is not a question the Republican party has faced up to, because it still feels, deep down, that a welfare state is inconsistent with such traditional American virtues as self-reliance and individual liberty.
Irving Kristol, circa 1976' Essay, The Republican Future
As I've been trying to tell so many of you "conservative" GOPers for the last several years, you've actually arrived at your own self inflicted nightmare!
And the bleeding heart liberal democrat who dislikes the evil corporations, they too may have some soul searching and self examinations to do too as the real benefactors of poverty insure the problem gets worse and never better.
