Posted on 02/04/2012 12:58:05 PM PST by Sub-Driver
Barbra Streisand: 'Barack Obama Has Not Put Anyone on Food Stamps' By Noel Sheppard Created 02/04/2012 - 3:25pm
"Barack Obama has not put anyone on food stamps."
So hysterically wrote Barbra Streisand at the Huffington Post Friday evening:
[R]ecently in a debate moderated by Fox News analyst, Juan Williams, Gingrich was questioned about controversial remarks he had made about poverty and African Americans. Gingrich had previously said black Americans should demand jobs, not food stamps. Juan Williams attempted to coax Gingrich into acknowledging that he was playing racial politics. To which Gingrich responded untruthfully that, "more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history." And there ended that portion of the debate with Gingrich receiving deafening applause from the audience, looking strong and principled. What Juan Williams failed to point out in that moment is that Barack Obama has not put anyone on food stamps. The grossly irresponsible and greedy practices of those on Wall Street, which led to the subsequent crash of the housing market, created the most severe recession our country has experienced since the Great Depression (which Obama inherited from George W. Bush when he entered office). These events, along with the continuous deregulation of our financial sector, conspired to make a record number of people eligible for government food assistance. Juan Williams completely missed this important opportunity to reveal the real truth behind Gingrich's racist assertions.
In Streisand's warped view, the unprecedented rise in food stamp recipients the past three years is all Bush's fault.
Yet, job gains the past 23 months are because of Obama's policies:
The truth is, President Obama's leadership on the stimulus, bringing the auto industry back from the brink of collapse, adding nearly 3.7 million private sector jobs in 23 consecutive months of job growth proves that our country is moving in the right direction. Because of the President's policies, our economy is on the road to recovery and it's time we start celebrating the truth.
So let's assume it took thirteen months for Obama's policies to take hold, and that he should only be judged on what's happened since the job market bottomed. Shouldn't that apply to people on food stamps as well?
As the United States Department of Agriculture reports, there were 39.6 million people on food stamps in February 2010. As of November 2011, there were 46.1 million, an increase of 6.5 million.
Are these Bush's fault too? If Obama gets credit for the rise in private sector jobs in the past 23 months, shouldn't he be blamed for the increase in food stamps recipients during the same period?
I doubt such logic would meet with Streisand's acceptance.
On a related noted, the actress that played Funny Girl showed that she still has a sense of humor writing, "Journalists need to stand strong and do their job, which is to challenge candidates immediately when they are purposefully misleading the public."
I guess she doesn't realize that if journalists did this, a Democrat would never be elected to public office anywhere in the country.
That goes doubly for her loves Bill Clinton and Barack Obama who would never have gotten near the White House except as part of a guided tour if America's press did their job.
But thanks for the laugh, Fanny.
How many of her fellow singers and actors (using the terms loosely) are on food stamps? She doesn’t relate well to the real people. This has-been needs to crawl back under her rock.
No way did Barbara Streisand right that HuffPost piece by herself. She wrote it with a gofer or a flunky and wrote less than 50%
Your right Babs, Barry Soetoro put them on foods stamps.
Apparently, naming Obama as 'the food stamp' President is one of them. That means DOGPILE!!!! Hit him again and again as the Food Stamp President.
The Citizens United Case is another one that is obscure to us, but has really p-o'ed the right people. Don't know how to use that one.
Finally, it ought to be a strategic goal of the anti-obama forces to needle and rattle this guy to such an extant, that he loses his cool. We need to expose Obama's vicious, mean and nasty heart under his fake exterior.
Old Babs has not aged gracefully, has she.
Thank you for posting the graph. Incredible how high the food stamp “participation rate” had grown since Obama took office. Just saying.....
You’re welcome.
As I have said earlier, most Progressives have their head stuck so far up their anus they can’t see reality when it stares them in the face.
Barbra, typical Socialist that she is and VERY liberal, will never utter the truth about another liberal Socialist in her everlasting quest to show that she is intelligent and by all means TOLERANT, and never, never RACIST.
She can sing pretty well, but that’s about it. Unable to see the truth, even when it’s staring her in the face.
According to the Census Bureau 49% now live in homes where at least one person gets a federal benefit — Social Security, workers comp, unemployment, subsidized housing, and the like. … That’s up from 44% the year before Obama took office, and way up from 1983, when fewer than a third were government beneficiaries.
This year, more than 46 million (15% of all Americans) will get food stamps. … That’s 45% higher than when Obama took office, and twice as high as the average for the previous 40 years.
http://www.worldnewstribune.com/2012/01/27/welfare-food-stamp-rolls-soar-under-obama/
Direct payments. The amount of money the federal government hands out in direct payments to individuals steadily increased over the past four decades, but shot up under Obama, climbing by almost $600 billion — a 32% increase — in his first three years. And Obama’s last budget called for these payments to climb another $500 billion by 2016, at which point they would account for fully two-thirds of all federal spending.
People getting benefits. According to the Census Bureau 49% now live in homes where at least one person gets a federal benefit — Social Security, workers comp, unemployment, subsidized housing, and the like. That’s up from 44% the year before Obama took office, and way up from 1983, when fewer than a third were government beneficiaries.
Food stamps. This year, more than 46 million (15% of all Americans) will get food stamps. That’s 45% higher than when Obama took office, and twice as high as the average for the previous 40 years. This surge was driven in part by the recession, but also because Obama boosted the benefit amount as part of his stimulus plan.
Disability. The number of people on Social Security disability has steadily climbed since the 1970s, thanks mainly to easier eligibility rules. But their numbers jumped 10% in Obama’s first two years in office, according to the Social Security Administration. That sharp rise was due largely to meager job prospects since the recession ended in 2009. When employment opportunities are scarce, experts note, many who could otherwise work sign up for disability benefits instead.
Those are what we call facts.
http://brianekoenig.com/2012/01/president-obama-food-stamps-entitlements-welfare-rise/
Democrats and liberals have become defensive and cranky over Newt Gingrich’s charge “that more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history.” But why are they so offended? Under President Obama more people are on Medicaid, another welfare program, than under any other president. And an estimated 16 million more will be added beginning in 2014—and Democrats boast about that.
The food stamp program, officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), has grown from 26.3 million people in 2007 to 44.7 million last year, an increase of nearly 70 percent.
The enrollment explosion, as Democrats point out, began with the start of the recession under President George W. Bush—though they conveniently neglect to add that they were running Congress. But the growth has accelerated under Obama, who expanded the program.
[A] troubling reason for the increase is that state governments have found it easy to get their constituents federal money — that is, money mostly raised from current and future taxpayers in other states — by making more people eligible for food stamps. According to a mid-2010 report from the Government Accountability Office, 35 states have no limit on the amount of assets a food-stamp recipient can possess. More and more states — the count was 36 at the time of the report — are providing “categorical eligibility” for food stamps to anyone who receives welfare services. Merely getting an informational brochure from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program counts as receiving a service.
Another way that states and localities can get federal money flowing to them is by providing token amounts of assistance with home heating bills. Even a dollar of energy subsidies can make someone eligible for food stamps, or increase the benefit level for someone already on SNAP. Vermont, for example, sends $5 checks to public-housing residents, even though their subsidized rent already covers heating, to qualify them for food stamps. Liberal activists call this strategy for getting federal money “heat and eat.”
The Obama administration didn’t create these perverse incentives, but it did magnify them (in legislation such as the $800 billion stimulus package, which largely repealed the 1996 welfare-reform law, as Slate’s Mickey Kaus and the Heritage Foundation have noted). The Obama administration is busy cracking down on states that attempt to reduce food stamp fraud, as James Bovard noted in The Wall Street Journal. Food stamp fraud costs America billions of dollars. This is remarkable, since eligibility requirements are so lax that no fraud is even needed for many underserving people to collect food stamps. As Bovard noted in the Journal, the Obama administration has encouraged states to abolish asset tests for food stamps, leaving even unemployed millionaires able to qualify: “Millionaires are now legally entitled to collect food stamps as long as they have little or no monthly income. Thirty-five states have abolished asset tests for most food-stamp recipients. These and similar ‘paperwork reduction’ reforms advocated by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) are turning the food-stamp program into a magnet for abuses and absurdities.” There are now a record 47 million people on food stamps.
As the Bloomberg article notes, some Republican lawmakers want able-bodied adult food stamp recipients “to abide by work requirements,” “but the Obama administration hasn’t been interested.”
[A] troubling reason for the increase is that state governments have found it easy to get their constituents federal money — that is, money mostly raised from current and future taxpayers in other states — by making more people eligible for food stamps. According to a mid-2010 report from the Government Accountability Office, 35 states have no limit on the amount of assets a food-stamp recipient can possess. More and more states — the count was 36 at the time of the report — are providing “categorical eligibility” for food stamps to anyone who receives welfare services. Merely getting an informational brochure from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program counts as receiving a service.
Another way that states and localities can get federal money flowing to them is by providing token amounts of assistance with home heating bills. Even a dollar of energy subsidies can make someone eligible for food stamps, or increase the benefit level for someone already on SNAP. Vermont, for example, sends $5 checks to public-housing residents, even though their subsidized rent already covers heating, to qualify them for food stamps. Liberal activists call this strategy for getting federal money “heat and eat.”
The Obama administration didn’t create these perverse incentives, but it did magnify them (in legislation such as the $800 billion stimulus package, which largely repealed the 1996 welfare-reform law, as Slate’s Mickey Kaus and the Heritage Foundation have noted). The Obama administration is busy cracking down on states that attempt to reduce food stamp fraud, as James Bovard noted in The Wall Street Journal. Food stamp fraud costs America billions of dollars. This is remarkable, since eligibility requirements are so lax that no fraud is even needed for many underserving people to collect food stamps. As Bovard noted in the Journal, the Obama administration has encouraged states to abolish asset tests for food stamps, leaving even unemployed millionaires able to qualify: “Millionaires are now legally entitled to collect food stamps as long as they have little or no monthly income. Thirty-five states have abolished asset tests for most food-stamp recipients. These and similar ‘paperwork reduction’ reforms advocated by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) are turning the food-stamp program into a magnet for abuses and absurdities.” There are now a record 47 million people on food stamps.
As the Bloomberg article notes, some Republican lawmakers want able-bodied adult food stamp recipients “to abide by work requirements,” “but the Obama administration hasn’t been interested.”
And she said this without wounding anyone with a sudden nose turn.
Food Stamp Fraud Costing Taxpayers Billions
December 9, 2011
The Washington Examiner recently reported that the two states bordering the nation’s capital are two of the five worst states for food stamp fraud.
http://blog.heritage.org/2011/12/09/food-stamp-fraud-costing-taxpayers-billions/
Government fighting food stamp fraud.
It is also illegal to advertise the sale of SNAP or electronic benefits transfer debit cards on Facebook, Craigslist or other public places, Mr. Concannon said. This policy change was sparked by incidents such as a Washington state woman telling her Facebook friends her SNAP card was for sale. An undercover officer met the woman and gave her $100 for her card, which had $200 in benefits on it. In another incident, a New Mexico woman put an ad on Craigslist to sell her $400 SNAP benefits for $200 cash. “Half the price twice the food,” she wrote before being contacted by a local TV station. The ad was quickly removed.
House GOP seeks to bar the use of welfare funds at strip clubs.
House Republicans don’t want Uncle Sam paying for any more lap dances. A bill that GOP leaders are bringing to the House floor Wednesday would require states to prevent welfare recipients from accessing or spending their benefits at strip clubs, casinos and liquor stores.
Bill would block extra welfare benefits for additional babies.
New Hampshire taxpayers should not be paying for bad behavior, according to the prime sponsor of a bill that would cap the financial benefits of welfare recipients who have additional children while receiving state aid.
Is President Obama Creating A Nation Of Dependents?
This year, more than 46 million (15% of all Americans) will get food stamps. That’s 45% higher than when Obama took office, and twice as high as the average for the previous 40 years. This surge was driven in part by the recession, but also because Obama boosted the benefit amount as part of his stimulus plan.
Obama Administration Offers $75,000 Grants to Sign Up More Food Stamp Recipients.
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.
http://www.akdart.com/poverty.html
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