Whitehouse Threatens Veto of Second Stimulus Over Food Stamps & Unemployment Benefits

Where I live has become like a ghost town. I used to have problems riding my bike around because of the traffic. Now I can go for a long time without seeing a moving car. There are houses that seem to not have anyone living there. I went to Wendy's the other day in what should have been a busy time and I had to wait 12 mins. for hamburgers because they were not making them ahead, at all.
If you have a job and think people who don't are lazy, you should be thankful and not despise poor people. My guess is that a lot of places will be like my town, in the near future. You may find yourself in the same situation I am in.
The kitchens in this area and the charitable food banks have gone past their capacity to help the number of people who ask for it, a long time ago.


[edit on 27-9-2008 by jmdewey60]

reply to post by jtma508
I agree that you cannot sterotype welfare and food stamp recipients, I must inform you that I see a tremendous amount of abuse in the system. I see this daily, and I can guarantee that a great many of the people that are on welfare in my neck of the woods have never worked a day in their lives. I have been laughed at because I have a job, and have worked for a living all my life. And these same people that I come in contact with somehow manage to have nice clothes, fancy cars, and plenty of crack, weed, and meth.
Something has to be done to break away from the sense of entitlement that people have come to expect from the government. When I went to college, I worked full time, and went to school full time, until my last semester, when I had to go part time and get a student loan for books and tuition. Was it fun? Nope. Was it worth it? Yep! I'm not bragging, though, unless it is to brag on my parents who taught me how to work, and to expect to work hard if I wanted to get anywhere. How can children develop a work ethic when mama doesn't go to work, and daddy isn't in the home and frequently doesn't even acknowledge he has a child.
Unemployment benefits should be extended, for those who have proven they are really looking for a job and just haven't been able to find one.

I have to ask.... DO any of you really know why the bill was rejected?

I can't stand GWB but if this was another handout for ACORN as one of the "other items" not mentioned, I can see why it was rejected.

theunionnews.blogspot.com...

MR. GINGRICH: Well, the last time we were promised they were going to save us, it was $300 billion; it was a housing bill. And what liberal Democrats in Congress did, for example, was add $500 million a year for a left-wing activist group called Acorn. Now, I can’t imagine why we’d want the taxpayer to give $500 million a year to a left-wing activist group, but it’s in the bill which the Bush administration signed and that was only back in July and that was going to solve everything. That was $300 billion ago.

Now we have a brand-new, liberal Democrats, many of whom, for example, Chris Dodd, was the largest single recipient of money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and he is the chairman of the Banking Committee. So the guy who got the most money is now going to write a bill to give taxpayers money to the people who gave him money. Somehow, I am not reassured.

hotair.com...

www.examiner.com...

A federal grand jury in Kansas City indicted four persons working for the group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, accusing them of submitting more than 15,000 voter registration forms with fictitious names, phony signatures and bogus addresses. (So many examples in the link)


ACORN is a liberal advocacy group that claims to speak for the poor and minorities — running these voter registration drives no doubt to prime the pump for an Election Day voter turnout operation that includes multiple voting by the same people at different precincts in a state with a tightly contested Senate race.

But ACORN also runs big-money community development corporations. The federal government supported ACORN housing programs to the tune of $2.6 million in 2003-04. That led Republicans to support efforts to prohibit Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from subsidizing ACORN’s voter registration drives.

Democrats resisted Republican efforts to restrict ACORN Housing Corporation funding, arguing that community development could rightly include registering new voters at their new addresses. But Republicans prevailed in adding voter registration restrictions to the Federal Housing Finance Reform Act.

Yep... I think it was ACORN, I have no idea why the boneheads aren't raising the red flag on this.

OBAMA-BACKER ACORN USES TAXPAYER MONEY FOR PHONY VOTE REGISTRATIONS - Some 20% of any "profit" from the rescue bill will go into a Housing Trust Fund to be tapped by ACORN and its ilk.

Here is more information on the Democratic effort to slide money from the bailout bill into the hands of socialist activists such as ACORN, which has a long history of working with Barack Obama, as well as a long history of involvement in voter registration fraud. Some 20% of any "profit" from the rescue bill will go into a Housing Trust Fund to be tapped by ACORN and its ilk.

Who is ACORN and why should we care?

Key info:

ACORN routinely commingles funds from its housing arm into political projects such as voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives. Money is fungible. Any taxpayer money that ACORN gets for housing makes it easier for the group to put its other funds into voter drives.

"These are taxpayer funds, in an indirect method, being used to subsidize political activism," says Rep. Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican and chairman of the conservative House Republican Study Committee. "I'm sure they're not going out and registering any Republicans."

Obama cut his community organizer teeth with ACORN. As a young lawyer he represented the group in a suit against the state of Illinois, which was concerned that postcard registration and a new motor voter law might invite fraud. ACORN later invited Obama to train its staff in leadership seminars.

ACORN has a political arm that endorsed Barack Obama for president in February and has stepped up its registration efforts to help elect a future benefactor. The Obama campaign admits to failing to report $800,000 in campaign payments to ACORN. They were disguised as payments to a front group called "Citizen Services Inc." for "advance work."

Consumer Rights League official Jim Terry says: "ACORN has a long and sordid history of employing convoluted Enron-style accounting to illegally use taxpayer funds for their own political gain. Now it looks like ACORN is using the same type of convoluted accounting scheme for Obama's political gain."

A major part of ACORN's sordid history is vote fraud. ACORN has been implicated in voter fraud and bogus registration schemes in Missouri, Ohio and at least 12 other states. Last July, ACORN settled the largest case of voter fraud in Washington state history, involving nearly 2,000 bogus voter forms. In Ohio in 2004, ACORN submitted forms for the likes of Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy and someone named Jive Turkey.

ACORN uses taxpayer money to elect people like Barack Obama who will work to get them more taxpayer money. Democrats are willing to rip off taxpayers in a national crisis to make it happen.


www.chathamrepublicans.com...

Americans only get Unemplyment Benefits for 7 weeks??? WOW!!!

In Canada we get 36 weeks. We can apply for an extention to over 50 weeks. Ouch.

reply to post by infolurker


And I suppose republican neocons using 600,000,000,000.00 dollars of taxpayer money to invade another country for their oil companies is okay welfare because it's secretly for Jesus?

Corruption is rampant. Republican, democrat - politicians are full of it and Washington itself is in pocket of the billionaire corporate pigs.

BTW, off topic, much? This thread is about denying welfare spending. See the title. Thanks.

Geez, there's not enough money to help Americans in need? That's not true.

How about $700,000,000,000 to help out the companies, like AIG, that continually screwed consumers every chance they could. $700,000,000,000 to help bail out the failed Lehman Bros, whose salary was over $70,000,000 per year. God only knows what his golden parachute will be.

How much is enough money for these people? They can't give back a few bucks for people who work their ass off for $40,000 a year to pay for their Ponzi scheme? I hope they go to Hell.

reply to post by nyk537


with an economy already diminishing if not out right dead, I work three jobs, and still cant afford to keep a gallon of milk in the fridge because apparently 267 dollars a month is enough to feed a family of four for a whole month. explain to me how dependency is a bad thing when in fact i am spit upon by the same rats who claim to help. needless to say living 300% below the poverty line really sucks and uncle sam is still pissing on me. take that into considration when belittling the low man on the totem pole.

Michigan busts $1.5 million food-stamp-for-cash ring

findarticles.com...

Dozens Are Arrested in Crackdown on Food Stamp Trafficking

query.nytimes.com...

More Americans are on food stamps but say the aid is not enough

www.star-telegram.com...

I don,t know about elsewhere but I know in my town selling food stamp for cash is common especially for those hooked on drugs. But I am sure that falls within the 10% range. I would say due to rising food prices people are in need of a bump. However since they are so willing to give out money so freely to one segment of society they also ought to give some away to the other people who are also struggling to put food on their table. Their are many people I know who don't qualify for this program struggling just as bad. I guess it pays to be poor, you get subsidized housing, help paying your bills, food stamps, free insurance, and help in many other areas.

It also included spending for a wide range of other measures, from a new Coast Guard icebreaker to a next-generation spacecraft and upgrades to local sewer systems.

The bill would have extended unemployment benefits by up to 20 weeks and boosted funding for food stamps by 10 percent.

same source for both

Bill isn't only about unemployment and food stamps. Lots of goodies also.

Two Democrats voted against the plan: Evan Bayh of Indiana and Claire McCaskill of Missouri.

source

very interesting. I wonder Why. Anybody no of a reason.

According to this website

Bush 2008 proposal to be spent on the food stamp program is an estimated 36.7 billion. Now add 10% to that if the stimulus package passes. That is about 3.67 billion more. Divide that between 50 states and one has to wonder how much more of an increase this would bring. Also remember bigger states would probably receive more due to bigger population I assume.

Which leads to this question and possibility. Could this be an attempt to pacify Americans so that the bailout of the financial institutions could be easier to swallowed? Remember ATS is about conspiracy.



[edit on 28-9-2008 by jam321]

Man i just can't understand this reasoning. Bailout the corrupt bankers that took risks ran their compainies into the ground.

DD said pretty much the same thing, I would like to see any evidence of this. For starters I dont think anyone ran anything into the ground, I think they came up short. Thats what I heard from Ben Stein and I havent seen anything to show otherwise as of yet.

Secondly when someone throws in unrelated crap into a bill its called pork barreling. thats a bad thging and should be avoided at all costs.

DO we need those things? Quite possibly, but they dont belong in this bill.

[edit on 28-9-2008 by jprophet420]

Here is a better breakdown where money supposed to have went. Seem like a lot of this could go in a regular appropriation bill.


www.politico.com...


a lot of these failed banks took risk cause government kept insisting they loan to people who had limited resource to repay the loans.

[edit on 28-9-2008 by jam321]

Unemployment is a benefit for single parents because the state will automatically garnish amounts needed for court ordered Child Support payments to the custodial parent.

At least the children don't suffer if dad looses his job.

If unemployment wasn't an option, there would be allot of dads in jail in addition to jobless.

But, I think 1/3 of usual pay in addition to Ch Sup garnishments should be encouragement for able bodied men to do whatever humanly possible and find suitable employment to help support their children and make ends meet for themselves.

I am a full time student and father of 3. I have a 3.5 GPA Honor Student, and spend up to 10-12 hours a day 3 days a week between commuting and school. I also have an 8 hour internship. Not much room for work. I utilize the food stamps and welfare that is available to me, and in all honesty we don't need any more. Between what we get from food and what we get from cash, is almost double what I could make working 12 hour days on my 3 days off. What we get feeds 5 mouths very comfortably. Even as a recipient I am glad this didn't go through. This "bailout" for corporate banking vultures aside, that $56 billion could definately help this country. But I would have to agree, not there. How about Educating or children on how NOT to elect complete morons? I would much rather see a repeat stimulus check to help me with my student loans. Im $86K in debt...where's my bailout??

I just don't get it i see people talking about how people scam welfare and this is true but what most people don't seem to get is the fact that there are not enough jobs for people out there and if you can find a job it pays minimum wage so you go find a second job for minimum wage now making about 12 and hour but you have a family of 4 so you don't qualify for any type of help from the government now that is good right except your rent is 600 a month you have 2 children in school who need massive amounts of money for supplies your medical cost for yourself is over 300 a month and your children s medical insurance cost 300 to 350 a month one is type one diabetic your wife is disabled but receives $0 because you make 12 an hour so how do pay for the gas to get her back and forth to the doctor when gas is 3.50 a gallon and god forbid your car breaks down no help there and car insurance makes you put your 15 on the polices which now exceeds 200 a month and wow we haven't even touched the grocery bill yet so i see the fine economic state were in. so can someone please tell me how to survive on minimum wage?? thanks.

reply to post by chimpy38


chimpy38, that is exactly my point. This stimulus for welfare and unemployment is small once you distribute it between 50 states. In addition it only focuses only on certain people. What about the people you describe?

Those people are basically SOL because all the government is going to say is you don't qualify but they are suffering just as bad. The group they want to give the stimulus to also get earned income credit, help with childcare, subsidize housing, help paying their rents, and many other benefits from government and charities.

Now as far as jobs for everyone. You are correct that there are not enough jobs for everyone. Don't think government wants 100% employment. But their are jobs.Even if a person gets a minimum wage job, they could still make up the difference with government assistance. However seeing that one would probably make the same just staying home is enough reason for somebody not to work.

Together, these 1.7 million workers with wages at or below the minimum made up 2.2 percent of all hourly-paid workers.

source

reply to post by drsmooth23


I would say the same thing to bailing out the corrupt banks and institutions, I don't see the need for a bailout at this point as many of theses companies appear in the last few days to be engineering their own bailouts, good let them continue

reply to post by jam321

not completely true the folks whom get the stimuli are the ones who have jobs those without jobs who just sit at home do not get the stimulus checks i know last round of checks i was attending college full time and was not working and i received no check because i had no income tax filing for the year prior.

Do the CEO's and the investors of those failing banks, insurance companies, etc. truly NEED $700B? They can work at Wal-Mart for $5.35 an hour, as many of you advise the poor to do. I'd say the failing institutions are scamming the system a whole lot more than somone on SSI who gets $300 a month.

Many of those on unemployment are innocent former employees of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG and etc. Don't they deserve a little "bailout" too, in the form of a few extra weeks of unemployment?

No more subsidies for the rich and stupid. Let the poor, the disabled and the struggling get their little piece of the pie too.

[edit on 28-9-2008 by Sestias]

reply to post by Sestias



Here Here i think you have hit the nail right on the head. I think the phrase that applies here is the rich get richer and the poor get screwed once again.