If you think you’ve heard it all, look at some recent comments by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, and you’ll quickly realize you haven’t.
Almost 46 million Americans get benefits under the federal food stamp program these days. (The program’s actual title is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP for short.)
But while some Americans legitimately need food assistance because they have lost their jobs or for other reasons, Vilsack has now declared food stamps a good way to create jobs!
“When you talk about the SNAP program or the food stamp program, you have to recognize that it’s also an economic stimulus,” he said on MSNBC.
“Every dollar of SNAP benefits generates $1.84 in the economy in terms of economic activity,” the agriculture secretary added. “If people are able to buy a little more in the grocery store, then someone’s got to stock it, shelve it, package it, process it, ship it. All of those are jobs. It’s the most direct stimulus you can get in the economy during tough times.”
What he didn’t mention is that those food stamp dollars must first be taxed away from the free market economy — where they might otherwise be invested to create jobs that would help keep people from needing government assistance in the first place. Or else those dollars must be borrowed, increasing our national debt and the massive interest we have to pay on the debt.
Alarmingly, this is not the first time a prominent Democrat has made the argument that food stamps boost the economy.
Less than a year ago, then-Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said every dollar spent on food stamps creates nearly $1.80 of economic activity. And Pelosi previously said unemployment benefits create jobs “faster than almost any other initiative you can name.”
Do the agriculture secretary, the rest of the Obama administration and Pelosi actually believe that food stamps and unemployment benefits — however necessary they may be at times — are the best way to stimulate the economy?
If so, then why isn’t our economy going gangbusters by now? After all, a record number of Americans are using food stamps today, and so many Americans have been unemployed long term that Congress has extended unemployment benefits up to 99 weeks!
If the administration and some leaders in Congress think government benefits are a path to prosperity, then our nation is in serious trouble!