Food Stamps, Contreception, and all that.

[earlycuyler]

Ill start with food stamps. I was watching the news just now, and it was announced that 40,000,000 are on them, and that they receive a minimum of $137.and change. This was announced on FOX, and in my opinion, is a lie. I know a family of five that only get $97.00. When we lived in Texas, just before moving here we got $10.00. Lots of lying going on around food stamps. Then their is birth control and the lies that surround that. To a T, every woman I know has never had any issue getting it in any form it comes in from pills to the implanted stuff. None of thees issues do it for me, and I dont know anyone sweating birth control pills. It saddens me to see that voters get so fired up over such stupidity.

 

[waltky]

Food-stamp use climbs to record 46.7 million...

Food-Stamp Use Climbs to Record, Reviving Campaign Issue
Sep 4, 2012 - Food-stamp use reached a record 46.7 million people in June, the government said, as Democrats prepare to nominate President Barack Obama for a second term with the economy as a chief issue in the campaign.

Participation was up 0.4 percent from May and 3.3 percent higher than a year earlier and has remained greater than 46 million all year as the unemployment rate stayed higher than 8 percent. New jobless numbers will be released Sept. 7. “Too many middle-class families who have fallen on hard times are still struggling,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in an e-mailed statement today. “Our goal is to get these families the temporary assistance they need so they are able to get through these tough times and back on their feet as soon as possible.” Food-stamp spending, which more than doubled in four years to a record $75.7 billion in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2011, is the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s biggest annual expense. Republicans in Congress have criticized the cost of the program, and the House budget plan approved in April sponsored by Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the party’s vice- presidential nominee, would cut expenses by $33 billion over 10 years.

Cuts Planned

“We need a new direction,” Amanda Henneberg, a spokeswoman for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, said in an e-mail. “Democrats are desperately trying to convince voters that they are better off than they were four years ago. But the opposite is true,” as evidenced by the food- stamp numbers, she said. Reductions to the program have also emerged as a point of contention in debate over a farm bill to replace current law that expires Sept. 30. The U.S. Senate in June passed a plan that would lower expenditures by $4 billion over 10 years, while the House Agriculture Committee the following month backed a $16 billion cut.

During the Republican primary campaign, then-candidate Newt Gingrich labeled Obama as “the best food-stamp president in American history.” When the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People called his statements “inaccurate” and “divisive,” Gingrich dismissed the complaints as a smear from “modern liberals” who are “off the deep end.” Food-stamp enrollment is rising partly because the USDA is pushing higher participation too aggressively, giving government money to people who may not need or want it, U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions said in a telephone interview.

‘Government Incompetence’