Food Stamps Show Real State of the Economy

If the Great Recession ended in 2009, and the economy is so much better, then why are government assistance rolls going through the roof?

The short answer is that the economy is still awful, media cheerleading notwithstanding, and unemployment is still rampant. Businesses are wrestling with Obamacare and are reluctant to expand. The official unemployment number is just below 8 percent, but the real number, which includes people who have given up looking for jobs or are working part-time while looking for work, is closer to 15 percent.

The increases in public assistance have been truly stunning. Enrollment in food stamps, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has risen 70 percent since 2008, when 28.2 million collected food stamps. Now, nearly 48 million people get food stamps – 1 in every seven Americans.

Nearly two million people have been added to Social Security Disability. It’s what many people go on when their unemployment benefits run out. Medicaid, the medical insurance program for the poor, has exploded from 45 million recipients in 2008 to 54 million.

Another reason for the boom in federal and state assistance is that the Obama Administration has been loosening requirements to get more people enrolled.  Seeing a new flow of cash from Washington, many states have gone along. 

In 2009, 17 states and territories eased eligibility requirements, “in some cases waiving any policy that restricted the assets a family could retain,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “The change didn’t mean the majority of SNAP beneficiaries had large savings accounts. Rather, it meant that states were no longer checking, according to state guidelines and program officials.”

Remember how government pressure to virtually abandon eligibility requirements for mortgage loans induced millions of people to borrow money they could not hope to pay back? When the housing bubble burst and crashed the stock market in 2008, it sucked billions out of people’s life savings that were tied to stocks. 

Now, even as the economy is sputtering, the federal government is pumping up another huge bubble of debt, with taxpayers directly on the hook.

The trend toward making more people dependent on government aid –and expanding a reliable liberal voting bloc – is no accident. The Obama Administration has been aggressively pursuing this, even buying advertising to get people to sign up for various programs, especially food stamps.

As the Journal puts it, “by expanding the pool of potential applicants, they [government officials] are redrawing the landscape of government assistance.”

At the same time, they are accomplishing what Barack Obama promised five days before his inauguration in 2009:  “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”

The only force capable of stopping this transformation of America from a self-governing republic into a socialist welfare state is the renewed energy and commitment of America’s Tea Parties.  Fearing retribution, several liberal U.S. senators have already announced that they won’t run for re-election in 2014.

They probably don’t want to have to explain why they backed Obamacare, which by then will be exposed as the expensive, dangerous monstrosity that gave birth to the Tea Party opposition – and will fuel another uprising in 2014.

--Robert Knight for TeaPartyUnity.org  March 28, 2013

Paul and Cruz on a Roll

Tea Party favorites made some sizable waves in Washington over the past few days. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) gave a Jimmy Stewart-style filibuster on March 6 against the nomination of John Brennan to head the CIA.

Mr. Paul would not permit a full Senate vote [Brennan was later confirmed 63-34] until the Obama Administration clarified its policies regarding the government targeting people within U.S. borders with "lethal force, such as a drone strike ... and without trial."

After 13 hours, and with some help mostly from fellow Tea Party Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Sen. Paul drew a statement from Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. that it would, indeed, be illegal for the federal government to use such drones inside America’s borders.

In American Thinker, Jonathon Moseley first noted that establishment Republican Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) denounced Sens. Paul and Cruz as “wackobirds.” Then Mr. Moseley put his finger on what it was really all about:

“First, no, it was not about drones -- not primarily. It was about the Obama administration arrogantly refusing to give a straight answer to questions from the U.S. Congress. In the ‘Fast and Furious’ and Benghazi scandals, Eric Holder and Barack Obama got away with murder. But this time, when challenged, Obama backed down.

“For a month and a half, the Obama Administration chose to give Rand Paul or Ted Cruz evasive answers. That conspicuous disrespect has been typical from Obama's team. That's what the fight was really about. Sometimes people use proxy issues to fight about a deeper principle.

“Some ask, ‘What did the filibuster really accomplish?’ This: You will answer questions from Congress, Mr. President.”

On March 13, Sen. Cruz forced the full Senate to vote on an amendment to the Continuing Resolution that would have defunded the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. On a straight party-line vote, the Democratically-controlled Senate voted 52 to 45 to reject the measure.

The next day, Sen. Cruz lectured gun control advocate Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on the Second Amendment while criticizing her sweeping proposal to ban “assault weapons.”

Mr. Cruz compared selective enforcement of the Second Amendment with selective enforcement of the First Amendment’s freedom of speech and the Fourth Amendment’s freedom against unreasonable searches.  Clearly miffed, Sen. Feinstein informed Sen. Cruz that “I’m not a first grader,” and that she’d been in the Senate long enough that she didn’t need lectures from him. 

Unfazed, Sen. Cruz continued to ask her questions, at which point Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) interjected a comment about the Texas state School Board “banning” books, something they didn’t do in Vermont, he said.

It’s a lively exchange and perhaps most notable for freshman Sen. Cruz’s tenacity in pursuing his point. Click here to see a 6-minute video of the exchange.

--Robert Knight for TeaPartyUnity.org  March 14, 2013

No Tours, No Tax-Funded Tee-Offs?

Not everyone in Congress is cowed by the media-protected White House’s hysteria over Sequestration cuts.  

After the Obama Administration announced that the White House would be closed to tours due to budget cuts, Rep. Louie Gohmert, Texas Republican, introduced an amendment barring taxpayers from being dunned to pay for more of Barack Obama’s expensive golfing trips until the ban on White House tours is lifted.

“None of the funds made available by a division of this Act may be used to transport the President to or from a golf course until public tours of the White House resume,” Gohmert’s amendment to the continuing resolution to fund the government reads.

The House Republican leadership, however, declined to support Mr. Gohmert’s measure. The House Rules Committee adopted a closed rule, so it meant that Mr. Gohmert’s amendment would not be considered on the floor of the House.

Not surprisingly, some in the media were not impressed by Mr. Gohmert’s creativity, as revealed by the rawstory.com website.

On MSNBC, host Martin Bashir asked NBC News correspondent Luke Russert this question:


 “Doesn’t this reveal the petty and personal nature of Republican opposition to this president?”

“Well, I think it reveals a sort of pettiness on both sides,” Russert opined.

“How is it petty by the president to apply the sequester since it’s something that he didn’t want but it’s been imposed?” Bashir pressed.

“Because the idea, Martin, is by putting that forward that there would be no more tours of the White House, who does that stick it to? That really sticks it to rank-and-file congressmen, who ordinarily would promise those types of tours to their constituents,” Russert insisted.

“It sticks it to the public!” Bashir shot back. “And it’s the public who are being injured by the sequester.”

In MSNBC’s world, Barack Obama, who, as Bob Woodward reminded us, originated the sequester, has nothing to do with the sequester. Anyone who counters the White House’s bald-faced attempts to scare the public with unnecessary cuts is “petty.”

For much of the media, this kind of spin is par for the course.
 
--Robert Knight for Tea Party Unity (March 7, 2013)

Curing the GOP's Infection

Comedian Bill Cosby apparently has implied that if you don’t support Barack Obama, you’re a racist.  This comes as something of a shock, since Mr. Cosby over his long career generally has avoided making political gaffes.

Nonetheless, it’s instructive to revisit one of his best loved routines – “Tonsils.”

Mr. Cosby relates how the doctor explained the need for surgery when he was a young boy. “Your tonsils guard your throat,” the doc says. “They have hand grenades, bazookas, and anything bad that comes into your mouth they fight it off. In your case, your tonsils have lost the war. As a matter of fact, they’ve gone so far as to join the other side, and they’re going to kill you….”

Watching the Republican Party establishment wage war on the Tea Parties and social conservatives, it feels a lot like Mr. Cosby’s scenario.  If the GOP abandons its commitment to traditional values in pursuit of the ever-transient “youth vote,” it will become the equivalent of infected tonsils. The party will cease to be an effective voice against moral and fiscal collapse, and will help facilitate America’s demise.

More than 100 GOP establishment figures have joined a Supreme Court brief against California’s voter-approved constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. 

The Republicans who signed the brief are infected tonsils. The Tea Parties and other traditionalist Americans already suspect the GOP, as currently constituted, will not effectively resist the Democrats’ relentless leftwing agenda.  By failing to slow down the madness of ObamaCare, gun control, out-of-control spending, unconstitutional appointments, bizarre nominees, unvetted “czars,” and incentives for more illegal immigration, Republican leaders resemble worn-down speed bumps. In some cases, potholes.

 

Last Thursday, 87 House Republican tonsils, perhaps terrified of “war on women” rhetoric, helped Democrats reauthorize a Senate-expanded Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), a piggy bank for the Left.  As Phyllis Schlafly notes, “VAWA has somehow ducked accountability for the nearly a billion dollars a year it doles out to radical feminist organizations.”

Other developments, such as ObamaCare’s abortifacient mandate, are testing whether America will succumb to such extreme political correctness that it will extinguish the right of conscience.  This assault on sanity and liberty could be blunted if the party of Abraham Lincoln found its voice. But too many in the GOP are scared of the media or listening to “conservative” pundits who tell them to be more like Democrats. 
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--Robert Knight in The Washington Times, March 4, 2013