I graduated college in 1975 and my first job paid me $9K a year. That amount, before taxes, had to pay my rent, car loan, utilities, clothing and food. Fortunately, I had taught myself to cook and I ate a lot of vegetables, rice and chicken.
Back then, food stamps were actually booklets of coupons in dollar amounts which were torn out and used to pay. I have way too many memories of standing behind someone in the checkout line who had a cart containing steak, shrimp and other expensive items which I could not afford, paying for them with those coupons. I would guess that a majority of you reading this have similar memories.
It’s decades past time that the entire program be junked and any benefits require some sort of work, even if it’s just picking up trash on the highway, which would at least provide some exercise for the gluttons.
I had the same experience in the mid-70s as an undergrad at Berkeley. I paid something like $20 for $40 worth of coupons, but I hated using them and only did so for a month. I was required to re-apply every month, and sitting in the waiting room for the second time in my Berkeley sweatshirt, surrounded by young moms holding infants, I decided it was not worth the effort and embarrassment, so I left.
Ben Franklin said, "I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it." As usual, he was correct. Today, most or all of the stigma of using SNAP has been removed, but the shame of using the coupons had its intended effect on me and forced me to make some hard choices that I've never regretted.
Was one of those single moms with a baby using the coupons. The embarrassment of it is palpable even 30 years later. I was in pharmacy school and worked 20 hours a week at the VA. I knew I was using them “the right way” to feed my son while bettering myself but still felt shame every time. The lack of any shame at all from those who use it now, the outright entitlement and refusal to work or educate themselves is what enrages me the most as someone who needed the program, used it for nutritional food to feed a child, and has paid back the program in spades (taxes) ever since. These parasites will NEVER become productive citizens paying taxes and raising productive children if their mindset is entitlement rather than shame.
Never been around food stamps other than the aforementioned checkout line but remember vividly the " commodities " utilized by my Appalachian maternal grandparents . Grits , white corn syrup , powdered eggs and others were seen as survival rations for both people and animals on mountain farmsteads . There is no shame in living better ; grifters have destroyed this program's effectiveness .
Yes. I failed to mention I was going to school full time and working part time but was out of savings and not getting by. Student loans at the time were all private (I believe) and required a co-signer, but my parents had no money, few assets, and were not enthused by that option. The best choice was to leave school to earn enough to live on, so I did.
Ironically, several years later I paid off my wife's student loans to qualify for our first home loan, so things had worked out. But I made many humbling sacrifices along the way and agree with you regarding the entitlement mind-set.
They should bring back the lines of embarrasment. I never used food stamps but Idid collect unemployment for a short time. A very short time.. You had to show up every week and stand in lines for an hour or more. Then prove that you had actually looked for employment. It was humiliating. I found a job. I'll hel0p anybody get on their feet but I will not help someone to continue to sit on their ass.
Yes - I also have memories of food stamp recipients driving off with their "groceries" in cars like BMW's & Mercedes while I was driving off with my paid for groceries in my Datsun 710.
This fraud goes back to the beginning. I was a grocery store cashier in high school. In my town, the "immigrants" used two carts, one for food stamps like you said, steak, lobster and the other cart for cash. They always had a wad of stamps and a wad of 100's.
I worked for a Datsun dealer for a time back in the 70s. The mechanics were always amazed when one came in with more than 60k on it and the engine had not yet blown up.
"Cracking down on fraud is doable. Idaho plans to put photo IDs on EBT cards. So much for the selling of cards for cash or drugs."
from those with means to those with needs. socialism thrives unabated from personal accountability. for some unknown reason i know that the miscreants will figure out a way to game that photo id system....they always figure a way to garner free crap.
First of all a cashier never even touches those cards they work just like a debit card. You only notice it’s ebt when the sales tax disappears. I suppose the state could require the pos system to verify ID at sale but without enforcement there will be no change.
on the money. when food stamps were used, the cashiers were required to check their food stamp card and verify with their id. the food stamps had a number that had to match the book so you couldn't (legally) accept loose stamps. of course that was only followed by major chains but even then, theft was rampant. so...free crap and even then, theft of those for nefarious chicanery. non-food items such as make-up, dog food, booze, cigarettes and more by selling the food stamps for cash right on the streets.
the only fix is cancel the whole dept. A kid will fair much better growing up in a culture where you carried your own weight rather than watching mom and dad steal from the state. It's as old as man himself.
I don't return bottles to get the deposit money - where I live I always see the illegals with huge plastic bags filled with plastic bottles - mostly water bottles. I've always thought that they got the empty bottles that folks put in the recycle bins in offices. I don't have the patience to wait to get my deposit back on a small bag of bottles - I just put them in my recycle bin to be picked up.
recycling is a joke. Very little of those bottles actually get recycled. The energy used to create one is 25% of the cost of recycling it. Recycle is simply virtue signaling. It's for those who were brainwashed in the 70's. The sky is falling. Don't go outside and if you do wear a mask.
We have what are referred to green bags you put a sticker on,,stickers being issued on your acct. at a fee with bags . Then take store withdrawl to get $24.00 for $20.00 in cans/bottles. We deem this treat money so buy steaks /seafood to fix at home.
The NC example shows that with their state revenues funding food stamps themselves would require 1.2% of those revenues. But they claim inability to cover this? C'mon
And most interestingly, the purported illegal alien count of 425K is over30% of the 1.4M recipients.
As we reduce the number of illegal aliens here, either through deportation or self-deportation, the impact on gov't spending (and car insurance premiums, btw) will be notable.
A reminder of the Newt Gingrich Powerhouse takeover in the early 1990's: It transformed the Dem President, Bill Clinton, into a "conservative" with his workfare mandate:
The conservative Congress may also have caused Clinton to turn his attentions away from politics and focus on more "personal" matters like Monica Lewinsky in 1998.
Defund and abolish not only the EBT/SNAP/food stamp program, but all of LBJ’s Great Society and War on Poverty welfare programs.
$25,000,000,000,000.00 (that’s TRILLION) dollars in transfer payments to deadbeats since 1965.
Both JFK and RFK, Jr. knew/know that America is a representative republic, governed by the Rule of Law. It has never been a democracy, aka Mob Rule. Stop LYING to the American people.
With an 11% error rate in food stamp funds doled out to the states from the Agriculture Department, which sticky-fingered bureaucRATs from them and the states are lining their pockets? Name these political grifters!
In the communist-controlled states (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, Mexifornia, Colorado, Washington, Oregon…you know, the usual suspects) the budgets that will be cut to fund their obese, deadbeat constituencies will always be the police and fire departments.
All this leftist hysteria and hand-wringing and complaining and gnashing of teeth and woe is me is much ado about nothing. The simplest solution is always best - DEFUND and ABOLISH these programs in their entirety, thus saving America’s taxpayers not million$, not billion$, BUT trillion$ of dollars in wasteful government expenditures.
Charity begins at home. Reach into your own pockets first if you want to support these parasites, not mine.
it's actually vote buying and that's all it is. the collective governments could not give two shites about who eats what, who eats healthy and/or any other aspect of welfare. they (both state and federal on both sides) care about how we vote.
In 1975 I was a medical resident in one of those Hospitals in Boston affiliated with the university that whose name begins with the letter H. As a first year I would have been eligible for food stamps on October 1 when our son was born. That day I also got a raise that put our family just over the minimum. My co-resident’s child was born in March and his family was eligible for assistance. He sent his wife down to register and the government workers didn’t believe they were eligible as they asked for her husband’s profession and she put Doctor instead of resident. By the time they investigated and approved them for assistance he also received that raise that put his family over the threshold. For my family rent, food, diapers and car insurance was nearly 100% of my income. Our answer, both myself and my co-resident was to work extra hours for additional income. I felt that there were two benefits to that strategy, I earned needed income and I learned more at the same time.
OK - I've heard every colloquialism from the past four hundred years and I've never heard of "chata chips." Do you have any idea where that came from? Enquiring minds want to know.
... and I'm beginning to like this Kennedy guy too. As the parent of an spectrum child, I would die happy if I could just know what happened.
My roomie in college was from Pittsburgh; he said "y'uns." I think "youse" is more of a Brooklyn, Bronx, or Lon-Guyland thing. Unfortunately, I've noticed that "ya'll" has become more of a Valedictorian expression.
What a racket. And what a large-scale erosion of the moral fabric of our society, with endless ripple effects. "The devil makes work for idle hands."
Another racket are the "disability" payments. People stay on disability for decades. Drug and alcohol addiction should not be grounds for disability payments.
What a huge disincentive these programs all are for people to get well or better themselves.
And what does it do to the psychological workings of an unworthy recipient's mind? They become accustomed to not facing difficult things, to twisting reality to justify what they are receiving, etc. The various habits of mental distortion make them vulnerable to all kinds of political manipulation by unscrupulous (mostly Democratic) political sales pitches.
They are addictive, of course. It's simply human nature. Magic free money, disconnected from any sense of the recipient having earned it, fosters lifelong dependency. There is no gratitude or even awareness that other people are taxed to create that free money. Just the expectation that the benefits flow freely forever. And then resentment if anything changes to even slightly decrease the benefit--as demonstrated by the pissface woman in the video.
What's even worse is that free money (in whatever form—rent subsidies, health care, the dole, EBT, etc.) disincentivizes work, self-sufficiency, and human development. How many millions of Americans have languished in semi-poverty because there was no strong incentive to realize their potential as a productive, creative citizen? And at scale—with agglomerated millions living this way in dense urban neighborhoods or in scattered rural landscapes—how many kids were born into that dependent culture where there were no role models showing them how to achieve a meaningful life?
The "experts" who designed the Great Society welfare programs were the most thoughtless people in American history.
PS And to think, Andrew Yang et al think it's a great idea to kick off a guaranteed income for all Americans, so that nobody would have to work unless they wanted to. That would absolutely destroy the country.
As I see it, LBJ (large boisterous jerk) assayed to begin an ambitious welfare program. I'm sure he wanted to name it Womb to the Tomb, but ended up calling it The Great Society. All this while trying to put some moves on Kennedy's widow. Food Stamps were the cornerstone, it seems. His vision had some folks voting Democrat for the next 100 years. All he wanted to do was eliminate poverty and racial injustice. No biggie! Coulda had it done by lunchtime.
Oh YES! In the early 60’s Democrats knew they were losing their stronghold in the south they’d managed by keeping the black population from voting through Jim Crow laws and KKK intimidation. Republicans were making historic inroads there.
That’s when they came up with the massive Civil Rights and Voting Act, Affirmative Action, and the plethora of welfare programs necessary to create an entirely dependent and permanent underclass. Diabolical.
It ain't the government. It's our money stolen through excessive and unconstitutional taxation. The right to tax income in the 16th amendment did not cancel out the rest of the constitution or our G-d-given rights.
Don, I think you forgot to include in your survey another group who will be impacted by curtailing the use of so-called "food stamps," or as now described, EBT cards," to wit: POLITICIANS. The get elected by promising gifts to voters and, once elected, they and their friends/family members and supporters are allowed to dip greedy hands into the always increasing pot of government "entitlements." Have you taken a look at the situation in Minnesota? Housing "benefits," "food programs," and all sorts of "entitlement programs" have been looted to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, possibly billions! (I won't mention who seems to be the primary group of looters, but it ain't the Lutherans of Lake Woebegon.) In turn, politicians like the execrable Timmie Walz are put into and retained in positions of power, where they can continue to spend other peoples' money on their favored constituents. A never-ending wheel of corruption that goes round and round and nobody knows where it's gonna stop.
And those programs themselves are nothing more than fraudulent fronts, just pocketing both donations and taxpayer money, offering no actual services at all. Minnesota is a swirling sewer of corruption, 90% of which is being perpetrated by its Somalian “community”.
I heartily second the notion to look at Minnesota. And weep. . The amount of gov fraud, waste and abuse is staggering (see Food for our future, reading and math proficiencies). And Walz, failed vp, thinks a THIRD term as governor is warranted.
Speaking for the Olsons, Olsens, Swensons, etc., native Minnesotans must be glad they aren't the target population any more. The Somali group have no native pride at all or they wouldn't have come here in the first place. They just joined the Treasure Hunt.
Circa 1979 I was between college and grad school and took a couple of years to figure things out and save some money before launching into life so I took a job as an ADC (Aid for Dependent Children) Case Worker, a program that provided a monthly welfare payment and food stamps to help single moms with kids. The program replaced the "missing" father - or his support payments - to run the home. We were salvaging "the family unit". I made monthly home calls on a round-robin basis to determine eligibility face-to-face.
Back then, it was tightly managed and the Fraud Department regularly sent investigators to investigate "tips" of fraud and abuse with prosecution often following. The recipients really needed the help and the families were appreciative of the help, but cheaters were chased down and stopped.
That was 1979-80 (Carter to Reagan era).
With our knowledge of how the corrupt Democrats have bastardized all the Freebies to many undeserving people through invisible NGOs and other government agencies, I am certain today's welfare is an unwarranted drain on our taxpayer funds. It is USAID for domestic money laundering.
I recently retired and am watching my nickels and dimes on a fixed income after a many-decades-career of working hard to earn it. These SNAP/EBT folks (in line ahead of me at the grocery store) that try to pay for their groceries with a card (and the PIN doesn't work) - is now a regular occurrence from people that look like they have more disposable income than me - and drive away in a late model car.
I blame Democrats for creating a culture of grift.
this will hurt some readers feelings or perhaps sensibilities. the base of the left is female and those who are male are female oriented (some call it simping). the overwhelming majority of food stamp recipients are female....and it's not even close. someone is going to have to show me how women are going to be convinced to voluntarily vote for their own pay cut in 2026 and 2028. i'm not saying i don't support this, i'm saying i can't figure out how it survives the next two election cycles.
While everything you say is 100% accurate, it’s been that way from the time these programs were instituted. And Trump’s 2 elections, especially 2024, proved that can be overcome.
And the Democrats know this very well. Why do you think they’ve been so desperate to flood us with illegals and register them to vote? Their jig is well and truly up.
Also worth noting, that there were well over 100 million people who watched Charlie’s memorial Sunday, and the lion’s share of those are fresh new YOUNG voters! There’s been a sea change around the country, and with secure elections, the Dems even know they don’t stand a chance.
Suzie, it is true and incredibly marvelous that a sea change is underway, and Charlie Kirk's martyrdom has given it a powerful shot in the arm.
We've been "down so long" that even the most optimistic of us are being super slow to begin to trust that maybe, finally, things are really going to turn around.
You just gave me the day's first giggle. An elderly school teacher told us to hope in one hand and spit in the other one to see which one filled up first.
Doesn't hurt my feelings, even though after my dad retired, he and mom made about 25 cents a month too much to qualify for any gummint assistance. Mom found a use for the hide of the buffalo nickel and the string tie Lincoln wore. She enjoyed stretching a dollar until it hollered.
Not a sensibility it’s a fact. But I don’t think it has as much to do fundamentally with femaleness as the lack of maleness. I read this somewhere, and will now add to my T-shirt list: father, Father, patria we need you.
You've struck a nerve with this column, Don. The comment count today is probably going to be way up there. And the examples people are giving in their comments is making for quite interesting reading.
The emotional outrage this topic generates can almost blot out the fact that, as you report, actually some very good things are finally happening to fix this mess. One more proof that Trump's 2nd term as President is truly breaking all records for being Incredible.
Excellent point! re: those NGO’s could be giving their billions directly to the poor rather than using it to (bribe) pay off politicians to create ever more programs to soak the taxpayer!!
Also, I’ve no doubt that the $14 million in bloated administrative costs could be cut down exponentially by firing about half of the needless administrators who do nothing but collect a government paycheck.
The concept of charity and the organs which were created to administer it has all but disappeared from people’s consciousness since government took over the job. The concept even became tarnished as more people resented “giving to the poor” because of the ever growing tax burden it forcibly demanded of them.
Just another Democrat scheme that corrupted another otherwise noble and Christian command, making government the great benefactor in its effort to be god.
P.S. It’s important to remember also, that those NGO’s not only enjoy tax deferred status, but in many cases ALSO receive funding through government grants - which of course gets laundered back through their lobbying to the politicians who instituted the grants in the first place! Government is a helluva racket and all at taxpayers expense.
I should be a democrat state politician. Where else can you waste federal tax money and then complain that the evil republicans want to cut out junk food and goodies.
What we have is pervasive “mission creep”. It’s in every governmental body and NGO’s. It’s like the old car jacks, you can’t go down but always can go up. The company I worked for built senior and low income housing, funded usually by some federal program. In the beginning the rules were tight and they wouldn’t pay a contractor more than $25,000 an apartment unit (in 1978) When we shut the company down in 2021, we had budgets of $250,000 per unit and heard of projects even higher than that. Half the increase was in labor and materials and the other half was more costly designs and upgraded finishes. At the same time private developers were building moderate condos for less than $200,000.
And many of those places were trashed within 1 year. I worked at some of these places doing electrical along the west side where UofIllinois Circle & the medical buildings were erected.
Have you forgotten Walter Mondale? His deceased daughter was one of the Arkansas peckerwoods conquests. No idea if Hillary’s “Arkancide” machine was involved.
"Jack Kennedy sold food stamps as a way to fight hunger in Appalachia, which legitimately was a problem."
I well remember (even though I was ten at the time in 1964) my maternal grandfather's sister who was married to a regional VP of sales for Euclid, a construction equipment company that eventually was owned by GM. Needless to say, he made a damn good living.
They had an adopted daughter who was six, and a fat little butterball. They lived in western NC. I don't know how that did it, but it was a scandal among family members that they had managed not only to enroll the little piggy in Head Start, but to also get food stamps to feed the little glutton. I suspect they probably signed up using only my great aunt's income, which was zilch.
They lived in a VERY nice house, and he owned a custom motor home that he had tricked out to take a few buddies hunting in the Dakotas every year. He always drove a new Oldsmobile, and had an impressive gun collection.
So guys like my father who never worked less than 60 hours a week, grew a 2 acre garden to supplement our grocery bill, and milked my grandparent's cow at least once a day, got to subsidize a Democrat like great uncle Bill, who likely made twice what my father did.
Dad used to say that the Depression lasted until 1950 in that area, so I believe there were some in legitimate of gubment assistance. But there was blatant abuse, even back then.
I grew up in rural SW Va and were if not for liquor making during the depression a lot of kids would have went without shoes. But just like big government our county was a microcosm. The district attorney was the Boss hog and the system was corrupt. It took the feds several years to break up the undercover money making after the repeal. They failed twice at prosecuting the DA because he was Robert E Lee's great nephew and jurors accepting bribes. The third trial was to convict the murders of a deputy sheriff and his prisoner during the conspiracy. The man who hired the murders was, yep you guessed it...the DA. The two men were given 99 years of prison time until the early 40's when the real killer felt he might die in the war so he wrote to his wife and confessed to have the innocent men released from prison. The evidence to falsely convict the two innocent men was found at the crime scene by, yep you guessed it, the DA. But any way most folks in our county they never knew there was a depression. It was just another decade.
I graduated college in 1975 and my first job paid me $9K a year. That amount, before taxes, had to pay my rent, car loan, utilities, clothing and food. Fortunately, I had taught myself to cook and I ate a lot of vegetables, rice and chicken.
Back then, food stamps were actually booklets of coupons in dollar amounts which were torn out and used to pay. I have way too many memories of standing behind someone in the checkout line who had a cart containing steak, shrimp and other expensive items which I could not afford, paying for them with those coupons. I would guess that a majority of you reading this have similar memories.
It’s decades past time that the entire program be junked and any benefits require some sort of work, even if it’s just picking up trash on the highway, which would at least provide some exercise for the gluttons.
I had the same experience in the mid-70s as an undergrad at Berkeley. I paid something like $20 for $40 worth of coupons, but I hated using them and only did so for a month. I was required to re-apply every month, and sitting in the waiting room for the second time in my Berkeley sweatshirt, surrounded by young moms holding infants, I decided it was not worth the effort and embarrassment, so I left.
Ben Franklin said, "I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it." As usual, he was correct. Today, most or all of the stigma of using SNAP has been removed, but the shame of using the coupons had its intended effect on me and forced me to make some hard choices that I've never regretted.
Was one of those single moms with a baby using the coupons. The embarrassment of it is palpable even 30 years later. I was in pharmacy school and worked 20 hours a week at the VA. I knew I was using them “the right way” to feed my son while bettering myself but still felt shame every time. The lack of any shame at all from those who use it now, the outright entitlement and refusal to work or educate themselves is what enrages me the most as someone who needed the program, used it for nutritional food to feed a child, and has paid back the program in spades (taxes) ever since. These parasites will NEVER become productive citizens paying taxes and raising productive children if their mindset is entitlement rather than shame.
Never been around food stamps other than the aforementioned checkout line but remember vividly the " commodities " utilized by my Appalachian maternal grandparents . Grits , white corn syrup , powdered eggs and others were seen as survival rations for both people and animals on mountain farmsteads . There is no shame in living better ; grifters have destroyed this program's effectiveness .
Yes. I failed to mention I was going to school full time and working part time but was out of savings and not getting by. Student loans at the time were all private (I believe) and required a co-signer, but my parents had no money, few assets, and were not enthused by that option. The best choice was to leave school to earn enough to live on, so I did.
Ironically, several years later I paid off my wife's student loans to qualify for our first home loan, so things had worked out. But I made many humbling sacrifices along the way and agree with you regarding the entitlement mind-set.
They should bring back the lines of embarrasment. I never used food stamps but Idid collect unemployment for a short time. A very short time.. You had to show up every week and stand in lines for an hour or more. Then prove that you had actually looked for employment. It was humiliating. I found a job. I'll hel0p anybody get on their feet but I will not help someone to continue to sit on their ass.
Roomie and I bought 100 # bag of lentils at start of semester learning how to fix them a dozen ways but we had a regular diet.
Would that there were millions more like you!
Yes - I also have memories of food stamp recipients driving off with their "groceries" in cars like BMW's & Mercedes while I was driving off with my paid for groceries in my Datsun 710.
This fraud goes back to the beginning. I was a grocery store cashier in high school. In my town, the "immigrants" used two carts, one for food stamps like you said, steak, lobster and the other cart for cash. They always had a wad of stamps and a wad of 100's.
I worked for a Datsun dealer for a time back in the 70s. The mechanics were always amazed when one came in with more than 60k on it and the engine had not yet blown up.
They never changed the oil?
"Cracking down on fraud is doable. Idaho plans to put photo IDs on EBT cards. So much for the selling of cards for cash or drugs."
from those with means to those with needs. socialism thrives unabated from personal accountability. for some unknown reason i know that the miscreants will figure out a way to game that photo id system....they always figure a way to garner free crap.
The irony is always how much harder they work at scamming than they would at any normal job.
Aint that the truth s.g. ?
First of all a cashier never even touches those cards they work just like a debit card. You only notice it’s ebt when the sales tax disappears. I suppose the state could require the pos system to verify ID at sale but without enforcement there will be no change.
on the money. when food stamps were used, the cashiers were required to check their food stamp card and verify with their id. the food stamps had a number that had to match the book so you couldn't (legally) accept loose stamps. of course that was only followed by major chains but even then, theft was rampant. so...free crap and even then, theft of those for nefarious chicanery. non-food items such as make-up, dog food, booze, cigarettes and more by selling the food stamps for cash right on the streets.
blah!
the only fix is cancel the whole dept. A kid will fair much better growing up in a culture where you carried your own weight rather than watching mom and dad steal from the state. It's as old as man himself.
Have seen snap used to buy a case of water which was emptied in the parking lot to collect 10 cent deposit per bottle in cash///Ore. eco law at work.
i had a gal offer me $20 in food stamps for 1 pack of kools cigarettes. that was when cigs were 99c a pack.
I don't return bottles to get the deposit money - where I live I always see the illegals with huge plastic bags filled with plastic bottles - mostly water bottles. I've always thought that they got the empty bottles that folks put in the recycle bins in offices. I don't have the patience to wait to get my deposit back on a small bag of bottles - I just put them in my recycle bin to be picked up.
recycling is a joke. Very little of those bottles actually get recycled. The energy used to create one is 25% of the cost of recycling it. Recycle is simply virtue signaling. It's for those who were brainwashed in the 70's. The sky is falling. Don't go outside and if you do wear a mask.
We have what are referred to green bags you put a sticker on,,stickers being issued on your acct. at a fee with bags . Then take store withdrawl to get $24.00 for $20.00 in cans/bottles. We deem this treat money so buy steaks /seafood to fix at home.
Bring back the WPA.
Just doing some math on this story...
The NC example shows that with their state revenues funding food stamps themselves would require 1.2% of those revenues. But they claim inability to cover this? C'mon
And most interestingly, the purported illegal alien count of 425K is over30% of the 1.4M recipients.
As we reduce the number of illegal aliens here, either through deportation or self-deportation, the impact on gov't spending (and car insurance premiums, btw) will be notable.
A reminder of the Newt Gingrich Powerhouse takeover in the early 1990's: It transformed the Dem President, Bill Clinton, into a "conservative" with his workfare mandate:
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/22/clinton-signs-welfare-to-work-bill-aug-22-1996-790321
The conservative Congress may also have caused Clinton to turn his attentions away from politics and focus on more "personal" matters like Monica Lewinsky in 1998.
Agree ; BTW the amount of trash on our roadways is disgusting .
“Hey fatso, you wanna eat? Get an effing job!”
Defund and abolish not only the EBT/SNAP/food stamp program, but all of LBJ’s Great Society and War on Poverty welfare programs.
$25,000,000,000,000.00 (that’s TRILLION) dollars in transfer payments to deadbeats since 1965.
Both JFK and RFK, Jr. knew/know that America is a representative republic, governed by the Rule of Law. It has never been a democracy, aka Mob Rule. Stop LYING to the American people.
With an 11% error rate in food stamp funds doled out to the states from the Agriculture Department, which sticky-fingered bureaucRATs from them and the states are lining their pockets? Name these political grifters!
In the communist-controlled states (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, Mexifornia, Colorado, Washington, Oregon…you know, the usual suspects) the budgets that will be cut to fund their obese, deadbeat constituencies will always be the police and fire departments.
All this leftist hysteria and hand-wringing and complaining and gnashing of teeth and woe is me is much ado about nothing. The simplest solution is always best - DEFUND and ABOLISH these programs in their entirety, thus saving America’s taxpayers not million$, not billion$, BUT trillion$ of dollars in wasteful government expenditures.
Charity begins at home. Reach into your own pockets first if you want to support these parasites, not mine.
We are trying hard to fix the problem in NJ this year.
never happen, NJ’s too corrupt, especially with Cory Booker & his TinselTown beard representing you.
Fruit, vegetables, Meat, Fish, dairy, no prepared/frozen foods. Programs are suppose to assist not provide. MAHA!
it's actually vote buying and that's all it is. the collective governments could not give two shites about who eats what, who eats healthy and/or any other aspect of welfare. they (both state and federal on both sides) care about how we vote.
the end.
Wisest comment today. Period.
thanks mac. i'm a simple guy so i have to keep it simple so i can keep up!
EVERY government hand-out program is a vote buying scam and which political party’s sticky-fingered mitts are all over them? Hint: Jacka$$e$.
💯‼️
That is true. And besides, it is lots easier than handing out $5 and $10 door-to-door in the "projects."
Agree , but food only. No cash , cards , or stamps .
In 1975 I was a medical resident in one of those Hospitals in Boston affiliated with the university that whose name begins with the letter H. As a first year I would have been eligible for food stamps on October 1 when our son was born. That day I also got a raise that put our family just over the minimum. My co-resident’s child was born in March and his family was eligible for assistance. He sent his wife down to register and the government workers didn’t believe they were eligible as they asked for her husband’s profession and she put Doctor instead of resident. By the time they investigated and approved them for assistance he also received that raise that put his family over the threshold. For my family rent, food, diapers and car insurance was nearly 100% of my income. Our answer, both myself and my co-resident was to work extra hours for additional income. I felt that there were two benefits to that strategy, I earned needed income and I learned more at the same time.
Goes back to parenting imho Steve.
OK - I've heard every colloquialism from the past four hundred years and I've never heard of "chata chips." Do you have any idea where that came from? Enquiring minds want to know.
... and I'm beginning to like this Kennedy guy too. As the parent of an spectrum child, I would die happy if I could just know what happened.
Mr. Surbers from West Virginia, you know, Appalachia? It’s a regional thing, kinda like “ya’ll” is to southerners and “youse” is to Pittsburghgers.
My roomie in college was from Pittsburgh; he said "y'uns." I think "youse" is more of a Brooklyn, Bronx, or Lon-Guyland thing. Unfortunately, I've noticed that "ya'll" has become more of a Valedictorian expression.
"Ya'll seems to be a favorite of politicians catering to the lowest.
could be.
I remember “y’uns” too when I visited Pittsboigh.
I’m from Chicago, now in NC. We say youze guys. My wife doesn’t say y’all, but J’all. lol
mom was from Chicago, don’t remember ever hearing ja’ll.
I never heard anyone say it either. Neighbors here in North Carolina said to her, “what is J’all?”. lol Now they tease her about it all the time.
I was thinking it was a result of a little kid trying say “Charles Chips” and it came out “chata chips”.
could be.
being a native prune-picker and stationed in some of our southern states, it took a while to pick up on their mannerisms & colloquial speak.
I did, however, enjoy those Georgia peaches.
Like I always say: "Eat a peach."
Utah peaches. Weighing in for the home team.
IKWYDT
He and the President held a press conference about that yesterday.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/videos/president-trump-makes-an-announcement-on-medical-and-scientific-findings-for-americas-children/
What a racket. And what a large-scale erosion of the moral fabric of our society, with endless ripple effects. "The devil makes work for idle hands."
Another racket are the "disability" payments. People stay on disability for decades. Drug and alcohol addiction should not be grounds for disability payments.
What a huge disincentive these programs all are for people to get well or better themselves.
And what does it do to the psychological workings of an unworthy recipient's mind? They become accustomed to not facing difficult things, to twisting reality to justify what they are receiving, etc. The various habits of mental distortion make them vulnerable to all kinds of political manipulation by unscrupulous (mostly Democratic) political sales pitches.
It's not that easy to get on disability, and it's not really enough, anyway -- as my recently disabled son found out.
Nailed it.
Entitlements, how do they work?
They are addictive, of course. It's simply human nature. Magic free money, disconnected from any sense of the recipient having earned it, fosters lifelong dependency. There is no gratitude or even awareness that other people are taxed to create that free money. Just the expectation that the benefits flow freely forever. And then resentment if anything changes to even slightly decrease the benefit--as demonstrated by the pissface woman in the video.
What's even worse is that free money (in whatever form—rent subsidies, health care, the dole, EBT, etc.) disincentivizes work, self-sufficiency, and human development. How many millions of Americans have languished in semi-poverty because there was no strong incentive to realize their potential as a productive, creative citizen? And at scale—with agglomerated millions living this way in dense urban neighborhoods or in scattered rural landscapes—how many kids were born into that dependent culture where there were no role models showing them how to achieve a meaningful life?
The "experts" who designed the Great Society welfare programs were the most thoughtless people in American history.
PS And to think, Andrew Yang et al think it's a great idea to kick off a guaranteed income for all Americans, so that nobody would have to work unless they wanted to. That would absolutely destroy the country.
Great comment but I would make one change…
The "experts" who designed the Great Society welfare programs were the most EVIL people in American history.
and corrupt. Remember, the southern peckerwood LBJ even said “I’ll have them n*ggers votin’ democRAT for the next two hunnert years.”
And let us not forget FDR and the New Deal!
tru’ ‘dat (my Naw’lins speak).
no fan of FDR’s but @ least he understood the insidiousness of public sector unions. JFK did not.
Yes - Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
As I see it, LBJ (large boisterous jerk) assayed to begin an ambitious welfare program. I'm sure he wanted to name it Womb to the Tomb, but ended up calling it The Great Society. All this while trying to put some moves on Kennedy's widow. Food Stamps were the cornerstone, it seems. His vision had some folks voting Democrat for the next 100 years. All he wanted to do was eliminate poverty and racial injustice. No biggie! Coulda had it done by lunchtime.
he was a poor excuse for a human
Reparations have been paid by now in the trillions.
once again, thank you LBJ - what a crook!
Oh YES! In the early 60’s Democrats knew they were losing their stronghold in the south they’d managed by keeping the black population from voting through Jim Crow laws and KKK intimidation. Republicans were making historic inroads there.
That’s when they came up with the massive Civil Rights and Voting Act, Affirmative Action, and the plethora of welfare programs necessary to create an entirely dependent and permanent underclass. Diabolical.
And it’s ALL been by design!!
Total dependence on the all powerful and most benevolent State.
ALL taxpayer-funded welfare hand-outs are unearned ENTITLEMENTS.
Medicare & Social Security are not. We, taxpayers, paid into them. Illegal-aliens, bums, deadbeats & parasites do & did not. Any questions?
I have heard and agree that they knew the removal of the black males from the household would destroy the black family. It worked.
" Guaranteed income " ; what an idiot . 🙄 Reckon who's going to fund that ?
It ain't the government. It's our money stolen through excessive and unconstitutional taxation. The right to tax income in the 16th amendment did not cancel out the rest of the constitution or our G-d-given rights.
Don, I think you forgot to include in your survey another group who will be impacted by curtailing the use of so-called "food stamps," or as now described, EBT cards," to wit: POLITICIANS. The get elected by promising gifts to voters and, once elected, they and their friends/family members and supporters are allowed to dip greedy hands into the always increasing pot of government "entitlements." Have you taken a look at the situation in Minnesota? Housing "benefits," "food programs," and all sorts of "entitlement programs" have been looted to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, possibly billions! (I won't mention who seems to be the primary group of looters, but it ain't the Lutherans of Lake Woebegon.) In turn, politicians like the execrable Timmie Walz are put into and retained in positions of power, where they can continue to spend other peoples' money on their favored constituents. A never-ending wheel of corruption that goes round and round and nobody knows where it's gonna stop.
And those programs themselves are nothing more than fraudulent fronts, just pocketing both donations and taxpayer money, offering no actual services at all. Minnesota is a swirling sewer of corruption, 90% of which is being perpetrated by its Somalian “community”.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2025/09/21/cartoon-of-the-day-drowning-in-fraud/
I heartily second the notion to look at Minnesota. And weep. . The amount of gov fraud, waste and abuse is staggering (see Food for our future, reading and math proficiencies). And Walz, failed vp, thinks a THIRD term as governor is warranted.
Speaking for the Olsons, Olsens, Swensons, etc., native Minnesotans must be glad they aren't the target population any more. The Somali group have no native pride at all or they wouldn't have come here in the first place. They just joined the Treasure Hunt.
Circa 1979 I was between college and grad school and took a couple of years to figure things out and save some money before launching into life so I took a job as an ADC (Aid for Dependent Children) Case Worker, a program that provided a monthly welfare payment and food stamps to help single moms with kids. The program replaced the "missing" father - or his support payments - to run the home. We were salvaging "the family unit". I made monthly home calls on a round-robin basis to determine eligibility face-to-face.
Back then, it was tightly managed and the Fraud Department regularly sent investigators to investigate "tips" of fraud and abuse with prosecution often following. The recipients really needed the help and the families were appreciative of the help, but cheaters were chased down and stopped.
That was 1979-80 (Carter to Reagan era).
With our knowledge of how the corrupt Democrats have bastardized all the Freebies to many undeserving people through invisible NGOs and other government agencies, I am certain today's welfare is an unwarranted drain on our taxpayer funds. It is USAID for domestic money laundering.
I recently retired and am watching my nickels and dimes on a fixed income after a many-decades-career of working hard to earn it. These SNAP/EBT folks (in line ahead of me at the grocery store) that try to pay for their groceries with a card (and the PIN doesn't work) - is now a regular occurrence from people that look like they have more disposable income than me - and drive away in a late model car.
I blame Democrats for creating a culture of grift.
this will hurt some readers feelings or perhaps sensibilities. the base of the left is female and those who are male are female oriented (some call it simping). the overwhelming majority of food stamp recipients are female....and it's not even close. someone is going to have to show me how women are going to be convinced to voluntarily vote for their own pay cut in 2026 and 2028. i'm not saying i don't support this, i'm saying i can't figure out how it survives the next two election cycles.
prove me wrong.
While everything you say is 100% accurate, it’s been that way from the time these programs were instituted. And Trump’s 2 elections, especially 2024, proved that can be overcome.
And the Democrats know this very well. Why do you think they’ve been so desperate to flood us with illegals and register them to vote? Their jig is well and truly up.
Also worth noting, that there were well over 100 million people who watched Charlie’s memorial Sunday, and the lion’s share of those are fresh new YOUNG voters! There’s been a sea change around the country, and with secure elections, the Dems even know they don’t stand a chance.
Suzie, it is true and incredibly marvelous that a sea change is underway, and Charlie Kirk's martyrdom has given it a powerful shot in the arm.
We've been "down so long" that even the most optimistic of us are being super slow to begin to trust that maybe, finally, things are really going to turn around.
That’s the HOPE! 🙏
We must keep the pedal to the metal and work for votes harder than ever to prove a mandate for common sense imho.
hope is not a plan. do you actually believe charlie kirk's wife is going to lead the nation out of the darkness of woke?
TPUSA, created by Charlie has been built on a foundation that will survive him, regardless who is at the helm, because that foundation is Christ.
we’ll see.
PURE EVIL surrounds US and the Jacka$$ political party is its epicenter.
Part right. Hope nor TPUSA nor Ericka nor Trump will save anybody from anything, but the Spirit that animates them will. Focus on Cause not effect.
You just gave me the day's first giggle. An elderly school teacher told us to hope in one hand and spit in the other one to see which one filled up first.
The hope I have in Christ outweighs the universe. The hope your teacher spoke was wishful thinking, not Christian hope.
Doesn't hurt my feelings, even though after my dad retired, he and mom made about 25 cents a month too much to qualify for any gummint assistance. Mom found a use for the hide of the buffalo nickel and the string tie Lincoln wore. She enjoyed stretching a dollar until it hollered.
Not a sensibility it’s a fact. But I don’t think it has as much to do fundamentally with femaleness as the lack of maleness. I read this somewhere, and will now add to my T-shirt list: father, Father, patria we need you.
same thing. as men recede, women ascend. as women thrive, men fade into oblivion.
Its as old as The Garden
so true
You've struck a nerve with this column, Don. The comment count today is probably going to be way up there. And the examples people are giving in their comments is making for quite interesting reading.
The emotional outrage this topic generates can almost blot out the fact that, as you report, actually some very good things are finally happening to fix this mess. One more proof that Trump's 2nd term as President is truly breaking all records for being Incredible.
Excellent point! re: those NGO’s could be giving their billions directly to the poor rather than using it to (bribe) pay off politicians to create ever more programs to soak the taxpayer!!
Also, I’ve no doubt that the $14 million in bloated administrative costs could be cut down exponentially by firing about half of the needless administrators who do nothing but collect a government paycheck.
The concept of charity and the organs which were created to administer it has all but disappeared from people’s consciousness since government took over the job. The concept even became tarnished as more people resented “giving to the poor” because of the ever growing tax burden it forcibly demanded of them.
Just another Democrat scheme that corrupted another otherwise noble and Christian command, making government the great benefactor in its effort to be god.
P.S. It’s important to remember also, that those NGO’s not only enjoy tax deferred status, but in many cases ALSO receive funding through government grants - which of course gets laundered back through their lobbying to the politicians who instituted the grants in the first place! Government is a helluva racket and all at taxpayers expense.
I should be a democrat state politician. Where else can you waste federal tax money and then complain that the evil republicans want to cut out junk food and goodies.
What we have is pervasive “mission creep”. It’s in every governmental body and NGO’s. It’s like the old car jacks, you can’t go down but always can go up. The company I worked for built senior and low income housing, funded usually by some federal program. In the beginning the rules were tight and they wouldn’t pay a contractor more than $25,000 an apartment unit (in 1978) When we shut the company down in 2021, we had budgets of $250,000 per unit and heard of projects even higher than that. Half the increase was in labor and materials and the other half was more costly designs and upgraded finishes. At the same time private developers were building moderate condos for less than $200,000.
And many of those places were trashed within 1 year. I worked at some of these places doing electrical along the west side where UofIllinois Circle & the medical buildings were erected.
Here in crooked Minnesota, the ‘feeding our future’ fraud has cost taxpayers over $250 million.
Never thought I would hear the words “crooked” and “Minnesota” used together. But then, “Mogadishu on the Mississippi” wasn’t a thing, either. Sad.
Have you forgotten Walter Mondale? His deceased daughter was one of the Arkansas peckerwoods conquests. No idea if Hillary’s “Arkancide” machine was involved.
🤔 Didn't know that ; Arkancide is older than I thought .
Jihadis need all the energy they can get. Chocolate bars are flying off the shelf faster than ammo and time bombs.
It truly is the most shocking level of fraud and all perpetrated by Somalians gaming the system. And Walz and Ellison turning a blind eye to it all.
Not a blind eye Suzie, they are full in imho.
I got a way to pay for all of it. Shake every dollar out of the Pelosi’s insider trading account.
Problem solved.
"Jack Kennedy sold food stamps as a way to fight hunger in Appalachia, which legitimately was a problem."
I well remember (even though I was ten at the time in 1964) my maternal grandfather's sister who was married to a regional VP of sales for Euclid, a construction equipment company that eventually was owned by GM. Needless to say, he made a damn good living.
They had an adopted daughter who was six, and a fat little butterball. They lived in western NC. I don't know how that did it, but it was a scandal among family members that they had managed not only to enroll the little piggy in Head Start, but to also get food stamps to feed the little glutton. I suspect they probably signed up using only my great aunt's income, which was zilch.
They lived in a VERY nice house, and he owned a custom motor home that he had tricked out to take a few buddies hunting in the Dakotas every year. He always drove a new Oldsmobile, and had an impressive gun collection.
So guys like my father who never worked less than 60 hours a week, grew a 2 acre garden to supplement our grocery bill, and milked my grandparent's cow at least once a day, got to subsidize a Democrat like great uncle Bill, who likely made twice what my father did.
Dad used to say that the Depression lasted until 1950 in that area, so I believe there were some in legitimate of gubment assistance. But there was blatant abuse, even back then.
I grew up in rural SW Va and were if not for liquor making during the depression a lot of kids would have went without shoes. But just like big government our county was a microcosm. The district attorney was the Boss hog and the system was corrupt. It took the feds several years to break up the undercover money making after the repeal. They failed twice at prosecuting the DA because he was Robert E Lee's great nephew and jurors accepting bribes. The third trial was to convict the murders of a deputy sheriff and his prisoner during the conspiracy. The man who hired the murders was, yep you guessed it...the DA. The two men were given 99 years of prison time until the early 40's when the real killer felt he might die in the war so he wrote to his wife and confessed to have the innocent men released from prison. The evidence to falsely convict the two innocent men was found at the crime scene by, yep you guessed it, the DA. But any way most folks in our county they never knew there was a depression. It was just another decade.
I started my career with a Cleveland company called Warner & Swasey (55th and Carnegie). Euclid was “down the street”.
Hydraulic equipment rules!
Swasey also made the world’s best machine tools (turret lathes) back then - before Asia copied them.