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The new American way of life... For a guy and his girlfriend with two kids, all you have to do is follow these proven steps: 1. Don't marry her! 2. Always use your mom's address to get your mail. 3. The guy buys a house. 4. The guy rents out the house to his girlfriend with his two kids. 5. Section 8 will pay $900 a month for a 3 bedroom home. 6. Girlfriend signs up for Obamacare, so the guy doesn't have to pay for family insurance. 7. Girlfriend gets to go to college for free for being a...

PORTLAND, Ore. — It's been one week since federal pandemic unemployment benefits ended. In the days following, restaurants across Portland tell KATU News they saw a spike in people looking for work. The owner at Chef's Table said his team is seeing about 50% more applicants, but this comes at a time when there are still many jobs to fill. "This is a welcome influx, but I think the people that are coming back in and applying again are going to find out, or know already, that there are massive job openings and we need this level of applications and...

New food stamp rules will save taxpayers $5.5 billion over 5 years DECEMBER 5, 2019 BY SHARYL ATTKISSON 2 COMMENTS Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or “Food Stamps” A new food stamp rule taking effect April first will save U.S. taxpayers $5.5 billion over five years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers food stamps. Food stamps or the “SNAP” program gave the average recipient household about $250 a month in 2018. Food stamps are funded with tax dollars. According to the government, 40 million Americans were on food stamps in 2018. In 2017, a little over 9% of...

There's an interesting headline out there today, which can serve as a good educational moment. Due to the ravages of the fires out in California, the White House is threatening to cut off federal funding. Now first off, The notion of this phrase "federal funding" (the article also uses the phrase "state funding") is offensive because it's dishonest. It's welfare, that's what it is. I'm not interested in P.C. comfort terms. As I wrote in May of 2017, when the progressives were starting off building their nanny-state empire, they had a very specific list of welfare queens - 48 of...

At the charming Hudson train station in New York, volunteers sell small cups of coffee for $1. The idea is to raise money for the children’s charity in town. They only accept cash. Not everyone carries cash. “Do you ever just let people have coffee on the promise that they will pay you later?” I ask. “Yes, and most do, but some people do not,” says the cashier. “We figure out who is who. When someone is taking advantage of our generosity, we say, ‘You may not have a cup of coffee. Next time bring cash.’ They figure it out...

Lawmakers say they have reached a deal on the massive farm bill, which has been hung up for weeks over demands by President Trump and House Republicans for new work requirements for food stamp recipients. Negotiators have agreed to jettison those requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which were included in the House version of the bill but not the Senate version. However, the White House has not yet signed off on the agreement and House conservatives may not support a bill that lacks work requirements.

President Donald Trump signaled his support Thursday for work requirements for food stamps. “When the House and Senate meet on the very important Farm Bill – we love our farmers – hopefully, they will be able to leave the WORK REQUIREMENTS FOR FOOD STAMPS PROVISION that the House approved,” Trump wrote on Twitter. The House version of the farm bill barely passed with a vote of 213-211 and included work requirements for single food stamp recipients. Democrats voted unanimously against the bill. The House and the Senate have to take the bill to conference, however, which will likely strip the...

A White House report said Thursday most Americans living in poverty who receive government benefits are not working, even though they are able to -- a published backing for the Trump administration's plan to impose new work requirements for welfare recipients. The 66-page report from the White House Council of Economic Advisers said poverty numbers of non-disabled adults are "a deeply flawed reflection of material hardship." The study said most non-disabled working-age adults who receive Medicaid, 61 percent, do not work or work very few hours. The other two major welfare programs, Medicaid and food stamps, have similar numbers. The...

( Full Title )While Everyone Was Focused on SCOTUS Pick, US Judge ELIMINATED Work Requirements for Welfare Programs Over the last month or so, people have been wondering who Trump would appoint to replace Justice Kennedy on the Supreme Court. Obviously, that’s an incredibly important news story to follow and it’s nice to know that Trump ultimately picked a solid conservative in Brett Kavanaugh. However, there’s still a lot of other stuff going on that Americans should be paying attention to. For example, an Obama appointed judge recently ruled against work requirements for welfare programs. Here’s more on that. From...

President Trump’s new executive order on welfare reform has laid the groundwork to get more Americans get back to work while protecting and strengthening the safety net for the truly needy. Federal agencies must take advantage of this opportunity to roll back harmful Obama-era policies that have trapped families in dependency and cost taxpayers billions. Right now, America combines near-record-low unemployment with near-record-high welfare dependency — the result of state-level eligibility exemptions, federal loopholes and policies that put work on the back burner. Many of these policies created incentives for able-bodied adults to sit on the sidelines — even though...

President Trump signed an executive order Tuesday for a government-wide review of welfare programs, with a goal of putting more people back to work, White House officials said. The order directs all federal agencies involved in providing more than $700 billion in low-income assistance annually to study programs that are “failing Americans,” and to report back in 90 days with recommendations, said White House domestic policy council director Andrew Bremberg. “Our country still struggles from nearly record-high welfare enrollments,” Mr. Bremberg said in a conference call with reporters. “President Trump endorses reforms that ensure those in need receive assistance, while...

President Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order directing federal agencies to strengthen existing work requirements and introduce new ones for low-income Americans receiving Medicaid, food stamps, public housing benefits and welfare as part of a broad overhaul of government assistance programs. The order directs federal agencies to review all policies related to current work requirements as well as exemptions and waivers and report back to the White House with recommendations within 90 days. “Welfare reform is necessary to prosperity and independence,” said Andrew Bremberg, assistant to the president and director of Trump’s domestic policy council.

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and to promote economic mobility, strong social networks, and accountability to American taxpayers, it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1. Purpose. The United States and its Constitution were founded on the principles of freedom and equal opportunity for all. To ensure that all Americans would be able to realize the benefits of those principles, especially during hard times, the Government established programs to help families with basic unmet needs. Unfortunately, many of the programs designed to help families have...

From our file named "Duh." The Alabama Department of Human Resources says 13 counties that reinitiated a work requirement for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as the food stamp program, saw an 85% drop in recipients. The counties had been exempt from the work requirement due to high levels of unemployment. But with the economy recovering, the state of Alabama restarted the work requirement on January 1 this year, which resulted in the massive drop in SNAP participants. ... Nationwide, there are about 44 million people receiving SNAP benefits at a cost of about $71 billion. The...

The Trump administration wants to impose a work requirement on able-bodied adults who receive food stamps and force states to pick up some of the costs as part of a wider plan to slash spending by $3.6 trillion over the next decade. Budget director Mick Mulvaney said that once states have “a little skin in the game,” they will be more inclined to root out abuses and waste in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Enrollments haven’t decreased much since the recession despite a low 4.5 percent unemployment rate. The program cost about $33 billion in 2007 with 26 million...

With the publication of the State Department inspector general's extraordinarily damning report on Hillary Clinton's private email server, we're going to find out if Bernie Sanders really wants to be president or if his campaign has merely been an academic exercise in socialism promotion. Donald Trump will certainly be able to use the report to wound Clinton and has already started, but Sanders is now in a position to use it to actually take her down. Right now, before the California primary. But will he? So far Bernie has been reluctant to speak about the emails - except once to...

States are moving to once again require able-bodied adults to put in work hours in exchange for food stamps, after the requirements largely were suspended by the Obama administration. The slow-moving reversal follows the administration pulling back on Clinton-era changes that required recipients to work for government welfare benefits. Signing the reform bill in 1996 alongside then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, then-President Bill Clinton said the goal was to make welfare “a second chance, not a way of life.” But during the last recession, President Obama allowed states to suspend a requirement that able-bodied adults without children work at least 20 hours...

LANSING (WWJ) - Could this mean the end of welfare as we know it? A bill has passed in the Michigan Senate that would require those receiving public assistance to do some “volunteer” work. Another bill, which passed the House Commerce Committee, requires drug testing, revoking benefits for welfare recipients who refuse the test or who test positive. “What [the legislation] does, it says, in order for your to receive your cash assistance, your welfare check, you must provide some kind of community service to the community,” said the volunteer work bill’s sponsor, State Senator Joe Hune, who represents Livingston...

The Obama administration’s efforts at extending executive authority were dealt a setback on Tuesday. The bipartisan Government Accountability Office flagged the administration’s end run around Congress in its July memo announcing changes to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) act, aka “welfare reform.” The GAO said that the White House needs to give Congress the chance to block its plan that permits states to tweak the work requirements that needy families must satisfy in order to receive government assistance under the program. The official word came in the form of a letter to lawmakers from GAO’s general counsel, Lynn...

Mitt Romney, hoping to draw a sharp contrast on welfare, is citing a disputed charge that President Barack Obama is giving recipients a free ride, and he can point to his own record of pushing for tighter rules. Romney, Massachusetts governor from 2003 to 2007, fought to require single parents with children as young as a year old to work to get welfare benefits if they could obtain state-subsidized child care. He opposed efforts to allow time spent in job training or education programs to count toward the state's 20-hour weekly work requirement for welfare recipients, and pushed for a...