In an entry at his Your Black World blog, Dr. Boyce Watkins dissects GOP presidential front-runner Newt Gingrich's recent comments about President Barack Obama being "the best food stamp president in history." Not only is Gingrich woefully uninformed, he is a hypocritical relic from the 1990s, Watkins argues.
Here are a few areas where Gingrich is wrong about Obama and the food stamp program. First, President Obama is not the reason that so many Americans are on food stamps. As a Finance professor myself, I can say that it is entirely obvious that most of the recent economic downturn and existing financial gaps in the federal budget were created during the presidency of George W. Bush.
Secondly, the United States Department of Agriculture makes it very clear that you cannot use food stamps to pay for trips to Hawaii or anywhere else. The benefits can only be used to purchase groceries or plants for food. Sure there are people who engage in illegal trade of food stamps, but the food stamp program is a relatively small part of the budget compared to corporate welfare, defense and bailing out banks that have squandered trillions throughout the years.
Newt Gingrich is an interesting man. He is a relic from the 1990s who has somehow been able to remake himself in the eyes of the American public. It is only fitting that the man representing the party of “family values” be the one who served his wife divorce papers while she was lying in bed dying of cancer, stating that “She’s not pretty enough to be the president's wife. Besides, she’s dying of cancer.”
Read Dr. Boyce Watkins' entire blog entry at Your Black World.