Free Republic

(I wrote this essay in 2012 for Western Rifle Shooters Association . .. I’m reposting it here in American Partisan on May 31, 2020, during the George Floyd riots, without revision.) In response to recent articles in mainstream military journals discussing the use of the U.S. Army to quell insurrections on American soil, I offer an alternate vision of the future. Instead of a small town. . . as the flash point, picture instead a score of U.S. cities in the thrall of riots. . . New Yorkers can imagine the 1977 blackout looting or the 1991 Crown Heights disturbance....

We are gratified by the Supreme Court ruling on Friday night lifting the final remaining injunction on the public charge regulation. As a result, the Department of Homeland Security will be able to implement its regulation on Monday. This final rule will protect hardworking American taxpayers, safeguard welfare programs for truly needy Americans, reduce the Federal deficit, and re-establish the fundamental legal principle that newcomers to our society should be financially self-reliant and not dependent on the largess of United States taxpayers.

Donald Trump's rule changes the so-called "public charge" rule that withholds green cards from immigrants dependent on government services. Federal immigration law says that immigrants desiring permanent legal status can be denied if they are likely to become a "public charge."Previously the government defined "public charge" as anyone receiving cash benefits. Those getting food stamps or housing assistance were exempt. The rule change means that green cards will only go to those who are free of dependency on government. New York and Illinois sued the administration over the change and federal judges issued injunctions preventing the rule from being...

President Donald Trump likes to claim credit for the number of Americans who have stopped receiving food stamps since he entered office. In July 2018, he said 3.5 million had fallen from the rolls; the next spring, 5 million had. In his State of the Union speech this month, the number had grown to 7 million. Democrats say those figures only show Trump has pushed struggling Americans off public assistance by pressing to restrict eligibility for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Medicaid and other programs. For now, the evidence supports Trump’s contention that an improving economy is more responsible for...

Indeed, the latest data from the Department of Agriculture shows that 7.7 million fewer Americans receive food stamps now than did when Trump entered the White House. The Agriculture Department administers the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, but the actual food stamp benefits are distributed by individual states.

On 18 different occasions in 2019, a Massachusetts EBT card was swiped in Hawaii — including one that was used twice at a posh island resort where rooms fetch $800 a night, a report published Monday said. The Boston Herald said it reviewed more than 2 million EBT expenditures over the past year and found thousands of out-of-state transactions that included withdrawals in Las Vegas and Alaska. The Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards are issued to needy citizens who qualify and are replenished monthly. The state's Department of Transitional Assistance bars cardholders from using the cards for vacation services —...

More than 6.2 million individuals dropped off food stamps since President Donald Trump completed his first full month in office, according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The most recent USDA data shows that 6,268,285 individuals discontinued their participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)— the program in charge of food stamps— since February 2017 when Trump finished his first month as president. Individual and household food stamp participation has consistently declined since 2013 back when the Obama administration was in power and enrollment in the program reached its highest point in U.S. history....

WASHINGTON—Immigrants legally in the U.S. will be ineligible for green cards if they use any of an array of social programs, and prospective immigrants will be barred from entry if they can’t convince a consular officer that they will never use such programs, as part of a final rule published by the Trump administration. The rule, issued by the Department of Homeland Security, is one of the most ambitious and sweeping elements of the Trump administration’s immigration policy, according to administration officials as well as immigrant-rights advocates opposed to the change. The administration was all but guaranteeing fresh criticism from...

According to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) officials, the Trump administration will propose a rule Tuesday to reduce unwarranted access to food stamps, removing 3.1 million from the program and saving taxpayers $2.5 billion. President Trump has argued that many Americans now using SNAP are not in need, given the strong economy and low unemployment. Recommended changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) would limit access to food stamps for households with savings and other assets. The goal is to end automatic eligibility for those already collecting other federal and state assistance. According to Reuters, the residents of 43...

Immigrants in the United States and their families are forgoing essential welfare benefits like public housing, food stamps and Medicare over fear of persecution, a new study has found. One in seven immigrants avoided public benefit programs in 2018 out of concern they would risk their future green card status, the Urban Institute found in a report out Wednesday morning. Last week, President Donald Trump proposed changing the nation’s legal immigration system to limit green cards given to migrants who rely on welfare benefits or who are not financially independent. Instead, the president said he would prioritize well-off citizen-seekers with...

The case underscores what experts say is a growing cost to taxpayers from the surge of Central American families and unaccompanied minors. "We're talking about billions of dollars in taxpayer benefits over the next few years," said Dan Stein, director of the right-leaning think tank, Federation for American Immigration Reform. "The payout for the taxpayer is enormous and income to the Treasury is miniscule." A FAIR study in 2017 found illegal immigrants are a net consumer of taxpayer benefits worth more than $100 billion a year, not including the cost of enforcing the border. While federal benefits are supposed to...

Amazon and Walmart on Thursday kicked off a two-year government pilot program allowing low-income shoppers on government food assistance in New York to shop and pay for their groceries online for the first time. ShopRite will join the two retailers on the program early next week, said the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The USDA has long required customers using electronic benefits transfer, or EBT, pay for their purchases at the actual time and place of sale. So the move marks the first time SNAP customers can pay for their groceries online....

President Trump said Monday that he's opposed to allowing immigrants into the U.S. who are dependent on welfare, citing the country's already extensive financial commitments. "I don’t want to have anyone coming in that’s on welfare,” Trump told Breitbart News in an Oval Office interview. “We have a problem, because we have politicians that are not strong, or they have bad intentions, or they want to get votes, because they think if they come in they’re going to vote Democrat, you know, for the most part," he added.

Future federal funding for a key nutritional program helping thousands of Alaskans in need remains in doubt due to the partial government shutdown, according to state authorities. The state doesn’t have any funds awaiting distribution under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program according to Shawnda O’Brien, director of Alaska's Division of Public Assistance. SNAP’s latest disbursement, $12 million sent to about 33,000 Alaska households, was originally scheduled to be available by Feb. 1 – but federal officials told the state to issue it prematurely, with the funds released Jan. 20. “They had to get the money out before the end of...

Philadelphia’s outlandish soda tax is what Democratic-party politics looks like when it lets its freak flag fly. So many classic elements are there: (failed) social engineering and “think of the children!” on one side, paid for with a punitive tax on poor people and destroyed businesses, which means destroyed jobs, which in turn means lives upended. What lives? Greedy capitalists with monocles, maybe? No, they’ll be fine. Think of ex-cons trying to regain their footing in society. To review this debacle, in 2017 Philadelphia, seeking to fund a universal pre-K program, slapped mammoth sin taxes on Coke and Pepsi (and...

The Trump administration pledged Tuesday that Americans will receive food stamps through February despite the partial government shutdown, but officials could not promise those benefits will continue if the shutdown lasts until March. Congress has only approved funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program through January, fueling concern food benefits used by 38 million Americans would expire amid the budget stalemate in Washington. In a call with reporters on Tuesday, Agriculture Department officials said that they will give states the money for February’s food stamps ahead of time – by Jan. 20 – to circumvent the expiration of federal appropriations....

We weren’t expecting to see a loss of food stamp benefits until the end of January, but a grocery store in Indiana reported they are unable to process EBT payments. In Clay City, Indiana, the local IGA discovered the problem last week. Initially, they thought it was a technical glitch. “Our machines weren’t taking any EBT cards and we didn’t really know what was going on. We didn’t know if it was a technical issue. And then we found out it was due to the government shutting down,” Tristen Malone said. (source) UPDATE: Officials at the Indiana Family and Social...

More than 20 years ago, Democrats and Republicans came together to reform our welfare programs to restore the system to what it was meant to be: “a second chance, not a way of life,” in the words of then-President Bill Clinton. Over time, without any changes in the underlying welfare reform legislation of 1996, that ideal has been watered down by out-of-control administrative flexibility in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Today, at the direction of President Donald J. Trump, we are taking steps to restore integrity to SNAP and move people toward self-sufficiency. As we approach the mid-point of...

The Trump administration wants to push more food stamp recipients to find jobs, after this year's farm bill failed to include work requirements for the federal food assistance program. The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Thursday proposed a rule that would limit the ability of states to exempt work-eligible adults from having to obtain steady employment to receive food stamps. Critics called the proposal "draconian" and said it would hurt workers and families who are already struggling. The move comes just weeks after lawmakers passed a $400 billion farm bill that reauthorized agriculture and conservation programs while leaving the Supplemental...

More than half of Americans receive more money in various types of government transfer payments (Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Social Security) than they pay in federal taxes.1 According to a report released this year by the Congressional Budget Office, only the top two income quintiles in the United States pay more in taxes than they receive in government transfers. Not surprisingly, the lowest income quintiles receive far more in transfers than they pay in taxes: