A few months ago I mocked state legislation designed to prevent big-time lottery winners from collecting food stamps. Isn’t that, I asked at the time, something that should have been taken care of decades ago?
Well, it turns out that the highly publicized case of a Michigan man who continued to receive food stamps (a Bridge Card) after collecting a $1 million-plus lottery win was unique. He benefited (not any more) from a technicality, and there is no evidence that such a bizarre circumstance has occurred anywhere else.
But that doesn’t stop the politicians from thumping their chest and indignantly claiming that they will be the one to “stop this nonsense.”
Which brings me to an interesting piece on CNNMoney.com (I sometimes forget how useful that site is for the non-businessman/woman).
The story shows that so-called bipartisan proposals to pay for an extension of the payroll tax cut are just silliness, Washington-style.
On Monday, Senate Democrats announced a new plan to preserve the tax cut which embraces two Senate Republican ideas designed to accomplish the same goal.
One problem: those two provisions will pay for one-tenth of 1 percent of the tax cut’s price tag.
What Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell aren’t telling you is that their plan to crack down on millionaires who collect food stamps or unemployment benefits is a fraud.
CNN took a look at the facts and found that, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the number of millionaires receiving food stamps is: zero.
Jeanne Sahadi of CNNMoney reported:
“…Even if there were tens of millionaires on food stamps, given that the average monthly payment last year was a whopping $133.79, turning away the rich won’t go very far as a pay-for.
“’I don’t think that barring millionaires from getting food stamps is going to strike a courageous blow for fiscal restraint,’” said Robert Bixby, who runs the Concord Coalition, a deficit watchdog group.”
As for the other part of the equation, apparently there are some millionaires out there – 2,362 in 2009 — who turned to unemployment insurance to make their way through tough times. But those figures are inflated by the large number of job losses on Wall Street during the 2009 financial meltdown, and they are not expected to last.
Sahadi points out that even if the cost of unemployment checks for millionaires remained at the 2009 level of $21 million for the next 10 years, that would only generate a tax cut pay-for of $210 million.
And that leaves Congress just 99.9 percent short of its goal of paying for the full cost of the cut.
How about our government start cutting their pay, and those who are retired? Most if not all increase their wealth while in office, they use insider trading and job grants to "friends" who in turn give them cash pay out or like Obama they contribute to his, their campaign fund. And they can also start contributing to their own insurance. And we all know that their staff makes almost 1/2 more than the average citizen employed. Cut staff and cut salaries. They all are wanting to cut programs, but we don't hear a word about them giving up any pay or benefits. They are ALL hypocrites. Even more so are the democrats, who basically started all of this with Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac…President Bush had gone to congress 11 times about something is wrong with these 2 lending firms. The democrats who ran both houses at the time and Barney Frank who headed them up, but they insist that President Bush started this. They are the most destructive of our country, the democrats.
I at one time had considered myself one, but I am seeing their games and lies now and I am ashamed of what that branch (democrats) have become. If you want a socialist country, go live in one! Quit trying to change our system that has worked until they got their hands on it.