Wall Street Journal
Posted on 09/03/2014 6:40:37 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
When Republicans want to support their position that Americans have become dependent on welfare, they frequently point to the number of workers on food stamps. In 2012, Senator Rand Paul called the program “out of control.” In 2011, Senator Jeff Sessions told the Daily Caller, “There is no doubt, if this country isn’t willing to look under the hood of the food stamp program as we try to bring our surging debt under control, we are obviously not serious about what we are doing.”
Paul, Sessions and their Republican colleagues are right that the number of food stamp beneficiaries grew considerably after the Great Recession. But that wasn’t a sign of the program growing out of control. It was the expected result of millions of Americans losing their jobs and suddenly not being able to afford basic necessities, like bread and milk.
Just as the number of food stamp beneficiaries rises during recessions though, it falls as the economy improves. And that’s exactly what’s happening now, as the Wall Street Journal reported Monday:
As you can see, we are just past the peak of food stamp enrollment. Over the next few years, the number of food stamp beneficiaries will likely continue to fall. The Congressional Budget Office has forecasted that spending on the program, as a percentage of GDP, will fall to 1995 levels by 2019.
In other words, food stamps aren’t out of control.
(Excerpt) Read more at newrepublic.com ...
Don’t pay any attention to the chart showing that food stamp distribution doubling under this president.
i.e. we found a temporary dip in the upward slope of the graph and use that to predict a permanent downward slope.
That provable sharp fast increase?
Oh, that’s nothing!
But fake a hockey stick graph for the global temp, and it’s a catastrophe that MUST BE IMMEDIATELY ADDRESSED!
So now we know where the hockey stick went. It just got turned the other way and added to end of this food stamp chart.
I notice his predicted downward curve is a much slower tapering off then that earlier steep spike upward.
Obama (and Dems) has his talking points on this down pat :cut food stamp spending by raising the minimum wage,.
It seems to sell pretty well with many.
Can’t recall ever seeing a projected decrease in government spending ever materializing.
SNAP is out of control, the author is just asserting that it won’t be in the future, because of a garbage-in/garbage-out GAO report.
Hardly a week passes that I am not in the check-out line behind some EBT/food stamp user.
I can't help but notice that less than a third of them shop as we do, buying a lot of store and generic brands.
The other two-thirds buy premium brands, prepared foods, prime cuts of meat and other stuff we can't afford. Then, to top it off, they drive away in vehicles we can't afford either.
Does anybody else notice this?
That little dip looks quite similar to the one that happened around 2008 ... I wonder what the future projections looked like then?
Notice it’s not just a downward trend, but the first part of the “prediction” is a much sharper decline than the actual data in the dip.
“Congressional Budget Office has forecasted that spending on the program, as a percentage of GDP, will fall to 1995 levels by 2019.”
From the Al Gore “The Arctic ice will disappear in seven years” forecast crew.
LOL…hilarious. Most of these SNAP recipients will never have a full time job. The jobs number Democrats crow about are part time jobs that won’t pay for $3.50/lb. hamburger and $3.50/gal. gas. They will be permanent dependents of the Democrats and will vote accordingly, which was the plan all along.
Yes! I also would like to know why our tax dollars are used to feed kids breakfast and lunch all year round in some cases, meanwhile their “parent” has an EBT card?
Note that the last section of the individuals enrolled shows another uptick.
SNAP spending jumped up to 200% of the level at the start of Obama's term - but it's under control.
That's my story and I'm stickin' to it!
The misery in this graph is probably EXTREMELY understated. I have long felt we have a 25-35% unemployment rate, and this 9% figure was a complete fabrication by manipulation.
Exactly. See my post at #16 as a real example of governmental forecasts based on GAO GIGO.
Now that food stamp use is declining (as predicted by CBO) we have a whole bunch of extra money to feed all those unaccompanied illegal aliens and their parents, cousins, uncles, aunts, and their whole damn village!
Another "hockey stick!"
Yay!
How to make a confused leftist like Danny Vinik cry:
Explain to him/them (in small words that even a child can understand) that the food stamp program was put into place to benefit huge agribusiness corporations, and not to benefit “the poor”.
So by mindlessly supporting ever-growing food stamp expenditures, they have actually been acting as “corporate stooges”.
Yeah, that will get them gnashing their teeth and wailing. But will it get them to smarten up? Well, we can always hope, but then how’s that “hope and change” thing working out these days?
Expecting a leftist like Danny Vinik to acknowledge reality is about as promising as expecting your dog to learn how to create software using the C++ programming language. It just ain’t gonna happen. Woof...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.