Food Stamps and Hyperbole

Today, the Right Side News reported that “an outstanding wide variety of humans accumulating public advantages long term, in particular meals stamps” and that “Judicial Watch has suggested in the past how out of managing the government’s meals stamp software has gotten below President Obama and the fraud and corruption it is plagued it.” The story takes on a tone that Obama’s guidelines were the largest, if not sole, the force of the extended enrollment and expenditures of the food stamp program. However, the statistics and information do no longer help the hyperbole.

1.) The program has exploded with a file-wide variety of people-46 million and growing-getting loose groceries from Uncle Sam.

Now, for the stats. Now, for the stats. This is true. Food stamp usage has reached a record variety of people. But what’s curious about the article is its advent, “how out of control the authorities’ meals stamp software has gotten under President Obama,” might have one accept as true with that the document is come what may solely be the result of Obama’s guidelines and no longer, in all likelihood, a few larger issue.

When Obama took office in Jan. 2009, there had been 28.2 million human beings receiving food stamps, and thru the ultimate month, there at the moment are 46 million, a boom of 64%. When Bush took office, there had been 17. Three million humans were on food stamps and 28.2 million whilst he left, increasing 63%.

There are three matters to thrash from this. First, Obama nevertheless has four extra years to go. Notwithstanding the predictions that there might be a downturn in food stamp usage, the 46 million wide variety can boom and push the sixty-four % wide variety higher. Two, the overall quantity boom has been a lot larger during the last 4 years (18 million) than the previous eight years (11 million), which means the commensurate percent increases do no longer accurately tell the entire photo. Third, and most importantly, on account of the start of 2001, the variety of humans on food stamps has multiplied with the aid of a hundred and seventy%.

This 12 12 months growth indicates that through distinct presidencies with distinct monetary rules, we’ve seen a spike in enrollment within the meals stamp application. What does that suggest? I am now not going to attempt to thrash through that mess, but it does suggest that a bigger issue is at play here than the regulations of one Barack Hussein Obama.

(Also, in that is a touch trite, but beneath Bush and Clinton before him, the meals-stamp program had ‘exploded’ with file enrollment. In truth, if Obama had accelerated the inherited quantity by way of just one on his first day of the workplace, he could have ‘set the report,’ as might have Bush, and so forth.)

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2.) [I]n monetary year 2012 it spent a file $eighty.4 billion on food stamps. That’s a whopping $2.7 billion boom from the preceding monetary yr!

Again, true; however, that is best a 3.Three% growth from 2011. Overall inflation for 2012 become envisioned at 1.Eight%, spurred on by food at domestic and meals far from domestic expenses increasing by way of 1.Three% and 2.6%, respectively. As a result, to preserve tempo with meals charges, we ought to have predicted growth in meals stamp bills in the variety of $1.01 billion and $2.01 billion. In quick, this isn’t always “whopping” inside the context of an $80 billion program within a $3 trillion budget (spit-balling on that parent).

(However, to live on the issue of food fees, we must be holding Obama’s feet to flame with the absurdity referred to as the Ethanol Mandate. For greater on the wonders of government electricity policy (and now I dissatisfied the left).)

3.) In 2009, the tab turned into $ fifty-five .6 billion, and by using 2010, it skyrocketed to around $70.Five billion.

Again actual, but the trouble is wherein turned into Obama the sole purpose of this? As pronounced by using the Daily Caller, in step with a CBO document examining the accelerated enrollment of the meals stamp application between 2007 and 2011, “CBO blamed three elements for the program’s enlargement. They attribute 65 percent of the boom to a susceptible financial system, 20 percent to briefly better gain quantities on account of Obama’s 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and 15 percent on other elements which includes food expenses.”

Now, to parse out what’s Obama’s fault as a long way as food charges and the meager financial recovery might take a person with a much higher financial acumen than I.

4.) Out-of-control authorities programs like this are usually at risk of fraud and corruption, and we’ve got already seen evidence that it has struck this one… [l]ast spring the USDA Inspector General discovered that many food-stamp recipients use their welfare benefit to buy pills, guns and different contraband from unscrupulous carriers. Some trade food stamps for reduced amounts of coins. The fraud has value taxpayers almost $2 hundred million.

Again, proper, but $200 million for a program that doles out $eighty billion is not evidence of rampant corruption and fraud. It’s zero., 25%. Yes, the problem ought to be addressed and the fraud removed. But if you need to speak approximately troubles of waste, let’s examine the issue of university students on meals stamps, which fee the state of Michigan $ seventy-five million, Virginia $30 million, and is actually marketed to college students by using colleges and legal carrier groups.

5.) Adding insult to harm, a federal audit discovered closing 12 months that many that do not qualify for food stamps acquire them below a special “extensive-based totally” eligibility program that disregards earnings and asset requirements. This is sticking American taxpayers with a multi-million-greenback tab to feed loads of lots of those who can properly find the money to feed themselves.

The document the story is regarding is from the GAO, which stated that during 2010, 473,000 households had been enrolled within the software that otherwise could no longer be eligible if not for the “huge-based specific eligibility,” which turned into carried out by Obama. That 473,000 discern amounted to two.6% of overall software enrollment, and total program bills ($460 million) amounted to just zero.65% of general bills due to the fact BBCE eligible families “acquired an expected common monthly SNAP gain of $81 as compared to $293 for other households.”

Moreover, the assertion that the “heaps of folks who can well manage to pay for to feed themselves” is quite deceptive. According to a CRS record, in FY2010, handiest 2.Eight% of families without a disabled or aged character had profits exceeding 130% of poverty. To get the expertise of what one hundred thirty% of poverty looks as if:

None of this is meant to help the Obama growth of the food-stamp program, limit authorities waste or fraud, or to otherwise exculpate the modern Administration for its failed rules and movements (Benghazi, navy intervention in Libya, Ethanol Mandate, managing of the fiscal cliff, Fast and Furious and subsequent claiming of Executive Privilege, do not get me started on the re-authorization of FISA, and many others.). Nor does it deflect the want for a few types of welfare reform.