Yet another indictor has now recently come to light
that would show that Barry’s success at being able to “fundamentally transform”
this nation, just as he promised he that would, continues pretty much
unabated. And while I hear a lot of talk
about efforts to rein Barry in, I see precious little activity coming from
those who comprise our new Republican majority in Congress. That indicator to which I refer is the fact
that over 20 percent, 21.7, of US children, an estimated 16 million youths, are
now on food stamps. That number has
almost doubled since the ‘Great Recession’ began in 2007. In 2007, 12.7 percent of children under 18
received food stamps, by 2014, that number had jumped to 21.7, an increase of
70.9 percent.
More than one in five of the country’s 73.7 million
children now receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits,
better known as food stamps. Now keep in
mind that before the economic downturn of December 2007, it was only one in
eight kids, or roughly 9 million, who were on food stamps. And it has been the ‘economic’ polices that
have been put in place by Barry over the course of the last six years, that are
primarily to blame for the nearly doubling that number. Because from day one he set out with a
purpose, determined to get as many people as possible dependent upon
government. And, really, what better place
for Barry and the Democrats to start than with the ‘children?’
The US child poverty rate, or the percent of
children living in households with incomes below 50 percent of the national
median income, is 23.1 percent. And it’s
a sad thing to have to say, but according to a 2013 UNICEF report, it’s only
Romania that ranks higher, at 23.6 percent.
There are 14.7 million poor children, of which 6.5 million can be
considered as being extremely poor. As a
way of putting those 14.7 million poor children into perspective, that number exceeds
the population of 12 US states combined: Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Montana,
New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, West
Virginia, and Wyoming and they also exceed the combined populations of Sweden and
Costa Rica.
And it’s that nearly 6.5 million extremely poor
children, or those living at less than half the poverty level, that actually exceed
the combined populations of Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, Rhode Island,
South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming. That number also exceeds the populations of
Denmark or Finland. The lost
productivity and extra health and crime costs stemming from child poverty add
up to roughly 500 Billion dollars a year, or 3.8 percent of the US gross
domestic product. Food stamps are one of
those costs. The program began in the
mid-1990s, designed as a temporary safety net for single adults without
children. Now it includes married
couples, couples with children, and single parents.
Never before in our history have we had as many
Americans, as we have today, who are dependent upon government in one form or
another. Food stamps is but one area
where we have seen a substantial growth in those things are routinely referred
to as being government ‘benefits’. But
if we can be honest in our discussions of such things, there is really very
little that’s actually beneficial from being dependent upon government. Because with dependence almost always comes the
intrusion of government into one’s life, because with those ‘benefits’ come a certain
amount of strings being attached. No actual
good ever comes, either for the individual or for society at large, from
increasing the dependency of citizens on the government.
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