Newt Gingrich has called Barack Obama "the food-stamp President" because this U.S. Dept. of Agriculture program has more than doubled under his watch. See the interesting table here. Now, in a bit of government bureaucratic irony, the U.S. Forest Service has posted this equivalent notice in many of its National Parks:
Please don't feed the bears. They get used to this(Thanks to John B. for a heads-up to this tidbit.)
source of food and then can't fend for themselves.
4 comments:
I agree that we should not feed bears, but the analogy between bears and poor folks is weak.
Most fact checks dispute the chart you cite.
This USA today piece says that the INCREASE on Obama's watch is actually LOWER than the INCREASE during Bush's admin.
(http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012-01-18/fact-check-gingrich-obama-food-stamps/52645882/1)
The Gingrich statement stands as just another example of demagoguery playing to a partisan crowd.
Maybe so ... but it took Obama only 3 1/2 years to do what Bush did in 8 years. And whoever said Bush was a Conservative anyway?
But, all this aside, I still trust the Senate Budget Committee more than I trust USA Today.
Normally, I would too, but one needs to ignore inconvenient data, don't you agree?
Data is data but I would like to enlighten one who appears numerically naive. The numbers you slavishly quote are for the number of food stamp recipients. The chart I referenced is in dollar terms. So in less than 3 1/2 years Obama increased the dollars spent on food stamps by 122%. Bush increased the dollars spent on food stamps in 8 years by 100%. USA Today appears, once again, to take its marching orders from the White House. (Did they contact you too?)
I suppose Gingrich might better have called Obama the "food stamp spending President."
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