Exhibit No. 698,427 demonstrating that the federal government wants more people dependent on ... the federal government: bonuses to states that get more people using food stamps.
You read that correctly. States get extra payments from Washington if they register growing numbers of Americans for food stamps.
"[I]t has been the explicit policy goal of the federal bureaucracy to increase the number of people on food stamps -- bonus pay is even offered to those states who sign up more people ... ," Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., noted in a recent news release arguing for reform of the program. "These bonus payments highlight the perverse incentive states have to expand food stamp registration rather than to reduce fraud and help more people achieve financial independence, which is the source of American vitality and growth."
Sessions introduced an amendment to end those counterproductive bonuses. His commonsense plan was linked to the $500 billion federal giveaway and subsidy free-for-all that is known as the farm bill.
And yet, the amendment was defeated. So states will in all likelihood keep getting extra money from Washington if they meet higher food stamp registration quotas.
And we wonder why we can't get federal spending under control.
Not that this is the only food stamp-related nonsense out of Washington.
A 1993 law requires states to offer voter registration when people apply for food stamps and assorted other taxpayer-funded benefits. It is thought to be too burdensome to insist that they go to a traditional voter registration office to do so.
Recently, the state of Arkansas was put on notice by Project Vote that it may be sued because not enough benefit seekers have been registering to vote.
"The group cited data from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission that show the number of voter registration applications submitted at Arkansas public assistance agencies," the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported. "The number dropped from 28,324 in 1995-1996 to 4,078 in 2009-2010."
Meanwhile, a federal judge has ruled that Louisiana must provide benefit seekers voter registration applications even if they apply for the benefits by Internet, telephone or mail -- not only when they actually show up at a public assistance office. And another federal court said New Mexico can't merely provide voter registration forms to assistance applicants who ask for one. It must offer them even to those who don't ask.
Convenience, it seems, trumps citizenship and any notion that people should not view registering to vote merely as an afterthought to applying for government aid.