Since President Trump took office, food stamp enrollment has dropped by over 2 million.

Since President Trump took office, food stamp enrollment has dropped by over 2 million.

— Ryan Fournier (@RyanAFournier) April 18, 2018

Virtually all immigrant families with four or more children in the house are on some type of welfare program, according to U.S. Census Bureau data in a new report raising questions about those Washington is letting into the country.

Census: 93.7% of immigrant families with 4 kids on welfare http://t.co/MjBD3GkbSg pic.twitter.com/TLqbc5dJoU

— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) September 4, 2015

That report has raised questions about the types of immigrants, apparently mostly poor, being attracted to the United States and the degree to which taxpayers have to take care of them.

The new Census data analyzed by CIS also showed that Hispanic immigrants are far more likely to use welfare than those from other areas like Africa, Europe or Asia.

For example, 65 percent of all Latin American immigrant families are on welfare. For those from Africa, it is 48.3 percent, Europe 25.9 percent and South Asia 17 percent.

Even among Latin Americans the numbers were different. Those from Central America and Mexico tapped welfare the most, at 72.7 percent. Those from the Caribbean were next at 51.3 percent and last were South Americans at 41 percent.

Maine Just Changed Their Food-Stamp Policy… Every State Should Do This

◼ Basically work to earn a living, and if you want Food Stamps then you must volunteer at least 20 hours a week of community service, Or Lose your benefits! - Conservative Tribune

The work requirement is simple common sense. If taxpayers are to subsidize people’s income — a bad idea to begin with — taxpayers should get something in return. Knowing that the folks they are helping are using the handout to improve their own lives, and thus society, is one such benefit; the improvement to their communities brought about by a potential 240,000 new volunteer hours worked across the state is another.

Should Michelle’s Healthy Food Standards Be Applied to Food Stamps?

◼ Dan Joseph asks supporters of Michelle Obama’s healthy food standards if those same standards should be applied to the kinds of food items that may be purchased with food stamps. Suddenly, these democrats have to change their tune. - Conservative videos

◼ STUPEFYING HYPOCRISY OF LIBERALS - Patriot Update

Progressive activists still talk as if we can afford any level of social service expenditures if we raise taxes on the rich, but workers can’t be created by raising taxes. Everything that the left has done, from breaking up the family to driving out manufacturing industries to promoting Third World immigration has made its own social welfare spending completely unsustainable.

◼ The Coming Collapse of the Welfare State - Daniel Greenfield/Front Page

Liberals and libertarians both act as if the crisis facing us can be fixed if we take more from the “wealthy elderly” or give them less. The crisis is born of demographics. It can’t be fixed by targeting the elderly because they haven’t been the problem in some time....

The welfare state has been spending more money with an unsustainable demographic imbalance. There are fewer working families supporting more elderly, immigrants and broken families. The Russians invest money into increasing the native birth rate. Instead we fund Planned Parenthood because liberal economic eugenics dictates that we should extract “full value” from working women as a tax base to subsidize the welfare state while discarding the next generation.

The “modern” system that we have adopted with its low birth rates, high social spending and retirement benefits is at odds with itself. We can have low birth rates, deficit spending or Social Security; but there is no possible way that we can have all three.

And yet we have all three.

...After a century of misery, the left still hasn’t learned that there is no substitute for the middle class. It’s not just running out of money, it’s running out of people.

The welfare state has no future. It is only a question of what terms it will implode on and what will happen to the social welfare political infrastructure when it does. The violence in Venezuela and the slow death of Detroit give us insights into the coming collapse of the welfare state.

81% of people receiving public housing benefits vote Democratic –

◼ And that’s just the tip of the handout iceberg - Matt Palumbo/Rare

Perhaps I spend too much time lurking around left-leaning blogs, but there are many myths taken as fact without any additional analysis.

One of the most prominent? The notion that red states take the most aid from the government.

...liberal economist Paul Krugman blogged that “Aaron Carroll of Indiana University tells us that in 2010, residents of the 10 states Gallup ranks as ‘most conservative’ received 21.2 percent of their income in government transfers, while the number for the most liberal states was only 17.1 percent.”

...But as solid as the statistics Krugman provided might seem, we’re left with one glaring problem: States aren’t people. Could it be possible that liberals within conservative states are the ones taking the welfare dollars?

A ◼ survey by the ◼ Maxwell Poll on the political affiliation of those receiving government aid showed this to be the case.

Type of Benefit Received - % Voting Dem - - - % Voting Rep
Public Housing.......................81%.......................12%
Medicaid................................74%.......................16%
Food Stamps..........................67%.......................20%
Unemployment Compensation..66%.......................21%
Disability (from Govt.)..............64%.......................25%
Welfare/Public Assistance........63%.......................22%

Attributing the problem to red states is false; the problem lies in the blue parts of the red states.

◼ Next time the media says “red states” are the poorest, remember this - Matt Palumbo/Rare

Paul Krugman and the left would like us to believe that red states are the poorest states.

PolitiFact rated such a claim as “true” noting, “The Census data also show that 9 of the 10 states with the lowest median household income were Red: Mississippi, Arkansas, West Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana, South Carolina and Oklahoma.” Whether or not a state is red or blue is based off how they voted in the 2012 election.

In another case of how sloppy PolitiFact’s “fact checking” can be, they didn’t even take cost of living differences into account when determining which states were the poorest.

Or that half of those “red” states have Democratic Governors....MORE, AT THE LINK.

◼ Krugman reports no individual level data, so let me. - Tino Sanandaji/A Research Fellow at the Research Institute of Industrial Economics/Super Economy

The Maxwell Poll has detailed information about welfare use....Hardly surprising, we see that in a two-party split, 60-80% of welfare recipients are Democrats, while full time Workers are evenly divided between parties.

◼ (S)imilar results in this recent NPR-Poll.Among the Long Term Unemployed, 72% of the two-party support goes to Democrats.

Catfish oversight, weather radios and a Christmas tree tax: Meet the pork-filled $956 BILLION Farm Bill

◼ Liberal and conservative watchdogs alike are hopping mad at what they say are pork-barrel projects included in the five-year agriculture spending law as home-state perks to lawmakers that are unneeded or redundant. - David Martosko/Daily Mail

The massive five-years agriculture spending plan, signed Friday by President Obama, includes a $3 million plan for Christmas tree taxes

Most of the bill covers food stamps, with the number of benefit recipients doubling since Obama took office

The U.S. will spend $1 billion per year loaning money to sugar barons so they can keep prices stable and avoid overseas competition

Another $100 million will go to study how to get Americans to buy more maple syrup

$1 million will buy weather radios for rural Americans, despite plunging hundreds of weather apps for smartphones and plunging access rates

The conservative Club For Growth called the legislation, which took members of Congress three years to write, 'a "Christmas Tree" bill where there’s a gift for practically every special interest group out there with a well-connected lobbyist.'

It's $956 billion of spending overall in a ten-year period, sketched out in legislation 959 pages long – nearly $1 billion per page.

But most of that money goes to food-stamp and nutrition programs, which are administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The 10-year spending total for those entitlements will hit $756 billion under the new law.

8th Circuit Says USDA Can’t Keep Hiding Food Stamp Data

◼ The Obama administration’s efforts to keep secret information about its scandal-plagued food-stamp program received a major blow from a federal appellate court that’s ruled the government can’t hide how much money businesses make by accepting the welfare payments. - Judicial Watch

In the last few years Judicial Watch has reported extensively on the fraud and corruption surrounding food stamps, which are administered through the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Food stamp rolls have grown immensely under Obama and the government spends an astounding $80.4 billion a year on the program to meet the president’s goal of eradicating “food insecure households.”

...There’s no doubt the USDA will spend more taxpayer dollars to appeal so it’s unlikely that the agency will make the information available anytime in the near future. In the meantime the agency responded to the federal appellate court spanking with an all too familiar “no comment.” In an e-mail to the Argus Leader the president of the Association of Health Care Journalists, also the health and science editor at a mainstream newspaper, calls SNAP a government black hole. “The secrecy involving food stamps is in a class by itself, exceeding that of any federal safety-net program.”

Federal Government Has Declared War On Work

◼ While 50 years ago the federal government declared war on poverty, I would submit that in recent years it has led an undeclared but real new war: a War on Work. The government increasingly is using its coercive powers to punish people who want to work, creating a vast class of able-bodied Americans dependent on the government — and politicians — for their daily bread. - Richard Vedder/IBD

While a vast number of government policies cause a decline in work, let me mention just six:

• Extended unemployment benefits.
• Expansion of food stamps.
• Higher taxes on workers, especially the most productive ones.
• Increases in Social Security disability payments.
• Increases in Pell Grants and other forms of federal higher education aid.
• Increases in minimum wage laws at local, state and federal levels.

...No nation ever achieved greatness when vast portions of its productive workforce were idle. America will not regain its economic vitality until it ends this war on work.

Now that pot is legal in Colorado, should people be able to use their food stamp money to buy it?

◼ Colorado bill may prevent use of food stamps money to buy pot. Wait… what? - Jazz Shaw/HotAir via JOhn Hawkins/RightWing News

◼ Food stamps at pot shops banned under Colo. bill - AP via TownHall

A bill proposed this week by several Republicans would add marijuana dispensaries to liquor stores, gun shops and casinos as places where recipients of public assistance payments and food stamps can’t use their electronic benefits cards to access cash.

There haven’t been any reports of public EBT cards being used at marijuana dispensaries. But lawmakers say pot shops should be added to the law to make clear it’s not legal.

Too much of too little

◼ A diet fueled by food stamps is making South Texans obese but leaving them hungry - Washington Post

...The family checkup had been scheduled at the insistence of a school nurse, who wanted the Salas family to address two concerns: They were suffering from both a shortage of nutritious food and a diet of excess — paradoxical problems that have become increasingly interconnected in the United States, and especially in South Texas.

For almost a decade, Blanca had supported her five children by stretching $430 in monthly food stamp benefits, adding lard to thicken her refried beans and buying instant soup by the case at a nearby dollar store. She shopped for “quantity over quality,” she said, aiming to fill a grocery cart for $100 or less.

But the cheap foods she could afford on the standard government allotment of about $1.50 per meal also tended to be among the least nutritious — heavy in preservatives, fats, salt and refined sugar. Now Clarissa, her 13-year-old daughter, had a darkening ring around her neck that suggested early-onset diabetes from too much sugar. Now Antonio, 9, was sharing dosages of his mother’s cholesterol medication. Now Blanca herself was too sick to work, receiving disability payments at age 40 and testing her blood-sugar level twice each day to guard against the stroke doctors warned was forthcoming as a result of her diet....

Obama using food-stamp cash to fund Michelle’s ‘Let’s Move’

◼ link - Andrea Peyser/New York Post

On Nov. 1, sizable cuts were gouged into the federal food-stamp program (or, as it’s now called, SNAP, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), which feeds 47.6 million people, or nearly one in six Americans. In the city, 1.9 million folks get the bulk of their Jell-O and Campbell’s Soup from stamps.

But news has spread among the poor, like leafy green vegetables, that it wasn’t heartless Republicans who triggered the cuts.

Rather, some of the food-stamp cash was snatched to pay for Michelle Obama’s pet project, Let’s Move.

What?

It’s come to this. Some 76 million meals a year will vanish from this city — poof! — partly because the president diverted money from SNAP to the first lady’s signature program, part of her Let’s Move anti-obesity initiative — the bean-sprout-heavy, $4.5 billion Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act....

The great food grab began in 2010, when President Obama, with Michelle and US Department of Agriculture honchos at his side, signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. At the time, he admitted taking cash from one pocket to feed the other.

“Some of the funding [for the lunch program] comes from rolling back temporary increases in food-stamp benefits,” he said, starting in the fall of 2013.

“I’m committed to working with [Congress] to restore these funds in the future.”

It proved to be magical thinking.

Part of the problem is that the food-stamp program has grown like wildfire under Obama — to $80 billion last year, with a more than 70 percent increase in recipients just since 2008.

◼ RECORD: OVER 47 MILLION ON FOOD STAMPS FOR ENTIRE YEAR - Wynton Hall/Breitbart

The One Statistic The Media Won't Report About That 'Draconian' Cut To The Food Stamps Program

◼ Over and over, the media will treat your eyes and ears to the cut in food stamps that will apparently throw America in a zombie apocalypse and destroy the entire galaxy. They love to repeat over and over the size of the cut to the program – $5 billion sure sounds like a lot. - Soopermexican/IJ review

As the graph below shows, with a $5 billion cut, the budget for the SNAP program simply reverts back to 2011 levels.

...Keep in mind, even with the $5 billion cut to the program, its budget still will have grown by 116%!

...This cut reflects the failure of Obama’s stimulus, which he said was a one-time effort. Now we find that the “one-time” stimulus was supposed to be permanent and grown! No one saw that coming! Except nearly every conservative critic of the stimulus....

Even with the budget cut, participation in the program will have grown 71% from 2008 until 2013. (MORE, at the link.)

◼ Just as the brilliant Madame Pelosi explained that unemployment benefits help create jobs, genius Jay Carney explains how food stamps create food. Ya gotta love liberal logic. - Allen West
◼ Jay Carney Explains How Food is Produced - The Black Sphere

Far too many people in America believe that government provides everything. They don’t even consider the origin of the funds that government disperses, or as Obama would say, “redistributes.”

It’s hardworking patriots — the very people whom the Left demonizes — who put food on the tables of the poor.

Economy

◼ Current Spending Pace Puts Debt on Track to Reach $22 Trillion by Feb '14... - ETF

Just imagine an undisciplined out-of-control spender whose credit limit has just been extended. In other words, they can continue overspending without any accountability. That “they” is the U.S. government.

It’s been almost a week since Congress reached a temporary deal to suspend the U.S. government’s debt ceiling and the Treasury department has already wasted no time by adding another $375 billion in new debt.

Suspension of a cap on U.S. debt, which was previously fixed at $16.69 trillion, means the Treasury department, headed by Jack Lew, can effectively spend whatever amount of money it needs or wants.

How much debt can the U.S. government rack up by the next debt ceiling deadline on Feb. 7, 2014? At the current spending pace of $375 billion per week, U.S. public debt would reach $22.70 trillion.

◼ CENSUS: 49% of Americans Receive Gov't Benefits... - CNS
◼ REPORT: U.S. Spent $3.7 Trillion on Welfare Over Last 5 Years... - Daniel Halper/Weekly Standard
◼ Administration fights to keep food stamp payments secret... - Josh Gerstein/Politico

South Dakota's Argus Leader newspaper urged a federal appeals court Wednesday to reverse a ruling blocking the newspaper from receiving data on how much the federal government pays to stores that redeeem food stamp benefits.

"The Argus is not asking for the invoices. They’re asking for the payment information. All we’re really doing is asking: how does the government spend its money in this instance?" Arneson told the three-judge panel sitting in St. Paul, Minn. "Because of the way FOIA is intended to be applied, we’re entitled to the benefit of the doubt. If there’s doubt here, the Argus is entitled to that benefit."

PANIC! Glitch Shuts Down Welfare Debit Card System Nationwide...

◼ People in Ohio, Michigan and 15 other states found themselves unable to use their food stamp debit-style (EBT) cards on Saturday, after a routine test of backup systems by vendor Xerox Corp. resulted in a system failure. - CBS Boston

The federal EBT website was unavailable due to the government shutdown.

◼ U.S. Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Courtney Rowe underscored that the outage is not related to the government shutdown. - AP

◼ EBT card failures cause ‘complete chaos’ at Walmart stores - Twitchy

THEY DONE SHUT DOWN EBT CARDS IN MISSISSIPPI...... Walmart fulla mad motha fuckas right now

— J.Thrash (@dreadsANDretros) October 12, 2013

Working at walmart while EBT is fucking up <<< I just might get shot today. Lol.

— . (@_KaylaJeann) October 12, 2013

◼ ‘Riot time!’: Food stamp users in near-panic over EBT card failures - Twitchy

Hundreds of reports on Twitter from many parts of the country indicate that Electronics Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards (the electronic version of food stamps) are not working this afternoon.

@CBSPhilly A power outage in a facility that handles EBT cards is causing disruptions to the program in 17 states.

— Bill Lind (@Bill_Lind) October 12, 2013

So ebt got shutdown in a few states aka lot of hungry ppl bout to start a riot, lock ur doors i predict a fuckin massacre

— ♡❤♡Lush Goddess❤♡❤ (@hood_fantasy) October 12, 2013

◼ EBT shutdown ‘glitch’ doesn’t bode well for Obamacare’s future - Twitchy

A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have. #EBT pic.twitter.com/O3cxi8pPHr

— Christian (@ChristianCalls1) October 12, 2013

NFRW Political Briefing

Obama's Economic Legacy

Debt:
$25.8 Trillion: Projected federal debt in 2023 (Office of Management and Budget)
$16.7 Trillion: Current national debt (U.S. Treasury Department)
$1.413 Trillion: Federal budget deficit for FY 2009 - highest in U.S. history (Congressional Budget Office)
$1.296 Trillion - Federal budget deficit for FY 2011 - second highest in U.S. history (CBO)
$1.294 Trillion: Federal budget deficit for FY 2010 - third highest in U.S. history (CBO)
$1.09 Trillion: Federal budget deficit for FY 2012 - fourth highest in U.S. history (CBO)
$6.1 Trillion: Added to the national debt since Obama took office (U.S. Treasury Dept.)
$8.7 Trillion: Amount Obama's FY 2014 budget would add to the debt through 2023 (OMB)
The Taxpayer's Share of the National Debt:
$52,900: Your share of the national debt (U.S. Treasury Dept. 8/8/13)
$19,315: Increase in your share of the national debt since Obama took office (U.S. Treasury Dept.)
Obamacare:
$2.6 Trillion: true cost of Obamacare once fully implemented (Office of the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives)
$1.8 Trillion: Cost of Obamacare coverage provisions from 2014 to 2023 (CBO)
$819.3 Billion: Amount of taxes in Obamacare (CBO)
$130 Billion: Amount employers will pay in Obamacare mandated penalties from 2013 to 2022 (CBO)
7 Million: Number of Americans who will lose their employer-based health insurance due to Obamacare (CBO)
Unemployment:
11.5 Million: Unemployed Americans
22.2 Million: Americans unemployed, underemployed or have given up looking for work (Bureau of labor Statistics)
14%: Real unemployment rate (Bureau of Labor Statistics 8/2/13)

GOP Prepares Food Stamp Legislation to Cut the Program

After an original Farm Bill containing food stamp program (SNAP) provisions failed on the House floor earlier this summer, House Republican leaders split the legislation and passed only the portion relating to farm programs.

Representatives Kristi Noem (R-SD) and Marlin Stultzman (R-IN) are among legislators who have helped design a food stamp bill that would cut food stamps by as much as $4 billion annually, reducing the nearly $80 billion-a-year program by as much as five percent. Fox News reports that House conservatives want to cut the program which they claim has doubled in cost since 2008.

Noem and Stultzman have said the legislation will find savings by tightening eligibility standards and imposing new work requirements. It would reduce the rolls by requiring drug testing and barring convicted murderers, rapists, and pedophiles from obtaining benefits. A spokesman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), who has agreed to try to advance the bill as early as next month, explains that the bill will include common-sense approaches such as work requirements and job training requirements for those receiving assistance who able-bodied adults without children.

Noem adds that talking about program policies and not just dollars, "shows that you really care about adding integrity into the program." According to Stultzman, "most people will agree that if you are an able bodied adult without kids you should find your way off food stamps."

While current federal law requires recipients to eventually work or receive work training, waivers issued by the federal Department of Agriculture have allowed States to set aside those work requirements.

The Senate has passed its own Farm Bill which keeps the SNAP and farm programs together and cuts SNAP by approximately $400 million a year, or about half a percent.

With no Farm Bill passed by both Houses of Congress, current farm law will expire at the end of September. Food stamp dollars will continue after that date but certain farm programs will be in danger. An extension of current farm programs was agreed upon earlier in the year to avert a dairy subsidy crisis but another extension will not be allowed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) says an extension would not pass anyway since many members do not want to continue certain subsidies that were eliminated in both the House and the Senate bills.

Government Shutdown Looms After Congressional Recess

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has said Republicans have not made any determination about how they will proceed with funding the government, after the debt limit deadline of September 30. That deadline is joined with action required to raise the debt limit.

In the past, Boehner has made clear that he demands a dollar of spending cuts for every new dollar borrowed but a vocal minority of conservative Republicans such as Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) have vowed not to raise the debt ceiling unless President Obama's signature health care law is defunded. Boehner has not indicated whether or not he would link his demands to a measure defunding Obamacare.

Reaching a fiscal deal in Congress proves to be headed for a fight. In many polarized congressional districts, House members are finding their constituents prefer they clash with Obama rather than compromise. In addition, as NBC Politics has reported, the poor relationship between the Boehner-led Republican House and the Obama administration sets the stage for a confrontational showdown this fall over extending spending to keep the government open and raising the nation's debt limit.Obama has told House Democrats that the will not negotiate with Republicans over the debt limit.

The new face of SNAP? Food stamps buy lobster for surfer and his buddies [VIDEO]

◼ During an hour-long deep dive into the growing use of food stamps in America, Fox News highlighted “the new face of food stamps.” - Caroline May//Daily Caller

That new face is a pina colada-sipping, lobster-loving lothario named Jason Greenslate.

Greenslate, a 29-year-old La Jolla California surfer and musician who sings that he does not want a “motherfucking job” and has “fuck no” guilt about living on $200 of what he calls “free money ” — or what the government called Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Benefits — while he avoids a job to hang out on the beach, sing and chase women.

House passes farm bill without food stamp funding

◼ The House broke with decades of tradition Thursday afternoon and passed a Republican-crafted farm bill that doesn’t include funding for food stamps, infuriating Democrats and setting up a potential clash with the Senate over how to pay for farmers’ aid and nutrition programs. - Sam Lengell/Washington Examiner

Food stamps are roughly 80% of the Farm Bill, and that's about to change

◼ House GOP leaders look to drop food stamps from farm bill - sean Lengell/Washington Examiner

House Republican leaders are whipping interest among their members on whether to split the food stamp program from a multi-year farm bill and bring an agriculture subsidies-only measure to the floor — a plan that would run against angry Democrats and even some reluctant Republicans.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., has been quietly pressing for separate food stamp and farmer aid bills since the GOP-led chamber last month stunningly voted down a five-year, comprehensive farm bill after more than 60 Republicans rejected the GOP-written measure.