Oh boy, I can’t believe I’ve been able to restrain myself so
far, but with the last/only seemingly sane person recently out of the game, it
looks like our Republican Presidential Nominee Candidates are really upping the
ante. I think most upsetting for me recently though is good old reliable Newt
Gingrich. He’s always there to say something either horribly offensive or
inaccurate, and then act incredulous as hell as to why you would be offended or
call him out on his misstatements.
So that brings me to his re-hashing of the “Food Stamps President” line. There are just so many things wrong with the whole thing, but
I suppose I should start with the quote, as if you haven’t heard it, so as to
not be decried as taking it out of context.
"Over here you have a policy which, with Reagan and me as speaker, created millions of jobs — it's called paychecks. Over here you have the most successful food stamp president in American history, Barack Obama.”
Note that this is after Mr. Gingrich generously offered to
go to the NAACP and help teach them what a paycheck is. Because that’s not
offensive at all. But racial things aside, because I know that even mentioning
that would get a GOB-Bluth-worthy “come on!” from Gingrich, this is still just such a willfully dumb thing to say.
First
of all, can I just calmly point out that "paychecks" isn't a policy?
Paychecks are things. They're pieces of paper, that entitle the denoted
recipient to the denoted amount of money, as compensation for some kind
of service or work performed. So they don't "create jobs" either. They
are given, as a result of jobs being done by people.
Also, can we talk
about the fact that the fact that there are more people on food stamps
is for a lot of different reasons, and not entirely a bad thing. No, I
don't mean that we should all be "lazy" and get food stamps for fun so
that we can choose not to work, or whatever the going rhetoric is in
conservative-land these days. I just mean that yeah, a shit-ton of
people are unemployed, and while that is extremely unfortunate, and I
don't think any sane person could argue that any president — much less
one up for re-election — would be actively trying to keep things that
way. The good thing is that we have programs like that to provide people
with something in the way of a safety net, so that they can eat. So
while I'm sure that everyone, President Obama included, would like there
to be more employed people earning paychecks, I'm also glad that we
don't have a government that is so wholly against social programs that
food stamps and other useful programs don't exist when we need them.
The next point is
that, as noted by PolitiFact, the number in Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients started climbing during President
Bush's tenure, because the economy was already tanking by 2007:
"The number of food stamp beneficiaries had started to head upward under Bush, partly because of more aggressive efforts to get eligible Americans to apply for benefits, and partly because of changes in the rules that had the effect of broadening eligibility. The experts we spoke to agreed that both policies began under Bush but were retained by Obama."
So not
only are there simply more people alive in this country than at any
other time (so it stands to reason there would be more people in need of
services as a population increases while its economy collapses), but
before President Obama even became president, there was a push by the
outgoing administration to get more people who were eligible for the
program to claim their benefits (because, after all, that's what the
program is for). And you know what? That's good. As much as I might want
to badmouth the Bush administration for other things, good for them for
reaching out to people and trying to de-stigmatize "food stamps" so
that people who need them won't be held back from their pride. The
children of proud adults shouldn't have to suffer or starve for the
pride of their parents, and furthermore, no one should have to feel
ashamed to use social programs that they are legitimately eligible for.
It's a shame that not only is Mr. Gingrich being dishonest, but that
he's also adding more stigma to a program that is actually helping
people, and that his suffering countrymen should be able to use without
fear of shame and judgement. It is always striking to me that the
supposed party of "patriotism" is the one that seems to hate helping
their fellow Americans.
