July 10, 2012 |
A mere 10 days since Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Lieutenant Gov.
Rebecca Kleefisch survived the recall election launched against them by
state's liberal coalition, Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom
Coalition, is ebullient as he takes the stage at his organization's
Washington, D.C., gala on the final night of FFC's national conference
at the Renaissance Hotel.
Reed has good reason to be happy; his return to the religious-right
spotlight is a turn of events that few would have bet on. Since he first
burst on the political scene in the 1990s as the wunderkind executive
director of Rev. Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, Reed's political
trajectory took him so close to the sun that his wings nearly melted.
Reed's career soared when George W. Bush signed him as a strategist for
his 2000 campaign, only to crash with revelations of his involvement in
the Jack Abramoff scandal. Along the way, he made a lot of money, and is
reported to live with his wife and two of his four children (the other
two are grown) in a house in Duluth, Ga., worth
$2.2 million.
The boyish contours of his face now marked with the occasional line,
Reed, at 51, still conveys a youthful vigor, fit and trim in a
well-tailored dark suit, with his full head of hair brushed neatly back
to display a smooth forehead. Taking no small measure of credit for the
triumph of Walker and Kleefisch, Reed boasts of the 600,000 voter
contacts he says his organization made to get conservative Wisconsinites
to the polls on June 5. Later that evening, Reed will present to
Kleefisch, who is billed as Wisconsin's answer to Sarah Palin, FFC's
Courage in Leadership Award. (Kleefisch will also accept the same award
for Walker, who did not attend.)
If you like what happened in Wisconsin, Reed implies, you're going to
love the 2012 presidential race, when FFC reaches out to 27.1 million
conservative voters; he promises that FFC will contact each of them
between seven to 12 times to either get them to the polls, or better
yet, vote early in states that permit it. Consider it payback, if you
will, for the outcome of the 2008 presidential election.
The day after the election Barack Obama won by a wide margin, Reed
says, he woke up feeling "like I'd been hit by a truck." Speaking of the
Obama campaign, Reed explains: "We were embarrassed. They ran circles
around us."
"I founded Faith and Freedom Coalition because I vowed that as long as I
was alive, we were never going to get out-hustled on the ground again,"
he told a group of activists earlier in the day.
Reed has
described
FFC, launched in 2009, as "a 21st century version of the Christian
Coalition on steroids." Reed's new organization seeks to meld the
religious right with the Tea Party movement through the use of voter
turnout stratedgies. But however successful he was in bringing
right-wing evangelical voters to the polls during his tenure at the
Christian Coalition, his managerial skills and business ethics appeared
to be less than stellar.
When Reed left the Christian Coalition in 1997, the organization was in
tatters, under investigation by the FEC for the kind of
"electioneering" prohibited for tax-exempt non-profits by the I.R.S.,
and internally riven due to
allegations
made by chief financial officer Judy Liebert that a firm whose
principals were friends of Reed's had over-billed the coalition to the
tune of $1 million -- and been paid.
In 2004, Reed was
implicated,
though not charged, in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal when his role
as a lobbyist on behalf of the gambling interests of a Choctaw Indian
tribe was disclosed in a damaging Senate investigation. While the
revelations derailed his attempt to win the Republican nomination for
lieutenant governor in the State of Georgia, the very religious-right
friends he snookered in the Abramoff scandal appear to have forgiven
him,
according to Sarah Posner of Religion Dispatches.
Once again cloaked in the cape of a Christian crusader, Reed is back on
the trail, doing what he does best: getting religious right-wingers to
the polls.
Back at the Faith and Freedom Coalition gala, and with an eye to the
media, perhaps, Reed issues what sounds like both a promise and a
warning. "We're not just playing around," he says. "We're not
shadowboxing; we are playing for keeps. We're playing for the most
valuable prize in the history of the human race and that's the United
States of America -- and we are not going to lose."
Eyes on the Prize
For Reed, however, there's likely another prize to collect, win or
lose. It may be wrapped up in the old Red, White and Blue, but this
prize comes in a distinctive shade of green. AlterNet learned that, in
order to identify and make its 600,000 voter contacts in Wisconsin --
many of them by text messaging and e-mail subscriptions -- Faith and
Freedom Coalition contracted with
Millennium Marketing, a division of Century Strategies, a political consulting firm whose CEO happens to be Ralph Reed.
AlterNet contacted Billy Kirkland, FFC's national field director, by
phone on June 29 to inquire about FFC's use of Millennium. "We did use
them and they were a big help in Wisconsin," Kirkland said. "It was one
of those things where any time you can use a new technology to reach
voters and educate voters on issues that are important to them -- we're
trying to be on the forefront of that, so I'd be more than happy to
respond by e-mail, but I've got a 4:00 [meeting] I've got to walk into."
So I e-mailed him a few questions, including: "How much did FFC pay
Millennium Marketing for what appears to be a broad array of services
provided in the campaign against the Wisconsin recall?" At press time,
he had yet to respond.
To billionaires willing to stake nice little chunks of their fortunes
on the outcome of the 2012 races -- presidential, Senate and
gubernatorial -- a little greasing of Ralph Reed's palm could be deemed a
small price to pay, especially when they can launder their
contributions, without fear of disclosure, through Faith and Freedom
Coalition, a 501(c)(4) non-profit under the U.S. tax code. This type of
organization is not required to disclose its donors to the general
public. However untoward, none of this is illegal -- not the contracting
of Reed's own for-profit firm by the non-profit he runs, not the
undisclosed sums from undisclosed donors that help to get carefully
profiled voters to the polls.
Changing the Model
Reed isn't in the business of persuasion; he doesn't waste his time on
voters who aren't already on his team. His deal is to make sure those
potential voters are first registered and then activated -- not unlike
what the labor unions do in their get-out-the-vote campaigns (though
likely with fewer billionaires to shell out for their efforts). This is
where the winning margin in most elections actually resides, Reed
explained at a strategy session during his conference. In fact, he
suggests, the success of FFC's voter turnout operation accounted for why
the polls that predicted a tight race between Walker and Milwaukee
mayor Tom Barrett in the Wisconsin recall election were so wrong.
Pollsters, he explained, work from a model of the electorate that is
based on the previous election: X percentages of various demographic
groups. Increase the percentage of any one of those demographic groups
-- say Christian conservatives -- and the model on which the poll is
based is no longer valid.
"So, when you go out in your county, and you start a Faith and Freedom
chapter or you work with the local party or with a local candidate or do
whatever it is you're doing, and you build an organization that knocks
on every door, and calls every voter and registers lots of new people to
vote, guess what?" he asked. "The turnout model's wrong."
That's what happened in the Virginia gubernatorial race, Reed said, the
year after Obama won the state by 5 points in the presidential
election. In the 2008 race, a mere 33 percent of the Virginia
electorate, Reed claimed, was conservative. But in the gubernatorial
race, the Faith and Freedom Coalition turned out a religious-right base
for Bob McDonnell, now considered to be a contender for the Republican
vice-presidential nomination.
A talented and energetic presenter, Reed, in his strategy session
titled "The Keys to Victory in 2012," peppered his audience with numbers
in service of his theory, punctuated with questions he answered
himself. Periodically, he asked his audience: "You with me?"
In Virginia, Reed said, "...we ran the Faith and Freedom program, and
we contacted every social conservative and fiscal conservative voter an
average of seven times -- we mailed 'em, we phoned 'em, we knocked on
their door, we e-mailed them," Reed said. "What percentage of the
electorate was conservative in 2009? Forty-one percent, according to
exit polls. So the electorate went from 33 percent conservative to 41
percent conservative."
McDonnell's pollster, Glen Bolger, had projected a 10-point lead for
his candidate, according to Reed, but McDonnell actually won by 18.
Where did those other eight points come from? Subtract 33 from 41 and
you'll find your answer, Reed said.
This year, consequently, Virginia is hardly a state Obama can take for
granted. There, Reed said, FFC is building a file of 350,000
conservative households that will account for some 600,000 voters. In
Florida, where Reed said Obama's 2008 margin of victory was 200,000
votes, Reed has set his sights on some 225,000 social conservatives who
are not currently registered to vote, but who will be, if he has
anything to say about it.
In the Wisconsin recall, Reed continued, FFC's 600,000 voter contacts
ranged in form from mobile media, e-mail and snail-mail to old-fashioned
door-knocking and the method that became the hallmark of the Christian
Coalition under Reed's leadership during its heyday: the
church-distributed voter guide. FFC doled out 100,000 of them, he said.
"So there were voters in Wisconsin who were getting e-mail from us,
they were getting a text message from us, when they went to church on
Sunday, our voter guide was in their church bulletin, and on Monday they
got a knock on their door," Reed said. "Okay?"
After the session, I asked Reed why, if the unions are as good at
turning out their base as everyone believes they are, did their
Democratic allies lose the recall race.
"I think they did their job," he said. "We just did our job
better...they worked to get their vote out, we worked even harder to get
our vote out...But in '08, they got their vote out and we didn't get
our vote out, and Obama won by a landslide. And that's what happens when
you don't get your vote out."
Doing 'Better' With a Bit of Help
But Reed had more than a little help in doing his job "better," as he
said. First, he was able to deploy sophisticated mobile marketing
technology that the other side apparently didn't have. Second, he was
able to sync his efforts to those of an old friend, Tim Phillips,
president of Americans for Prosperity (the astroturf group founded by
the Koch brothers) and Reed's former business partner at Century
Strategies. (In fact, Reed's public unveiling of his Faith and Freedom
Coalition took place at an
Atlanta rally, co-sponsored by AFP, staged in opposition to healthcare reform during the 2009 summer of town-hall rage.
The Wisconsin chapter of Americans for Prosperity was one of the
organization's first state-level entities, and was long run by the
hard-working but notoriously
dirty political operative Mark Block,
who left the organization in 2011 to run Herman Cain's presidential
campaign. Most of the politicians on Wisconsin's right-wing roster owe
all or part of their careers to AFP: U.S.
Representatives Reid Ribble
and Sean Duffy, elected in the 2010 Tea Party wave, were nurtured under
the AFP wing, as was Gov. Scott Walker. Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the
House Budget Committee, is a favorite speaker at AFP gatherings. Reince
Priebus, who chaired the state Republican Party before winning the
chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, at the time it was
implicated in a Milwaukee vote-caging scheme executed by AFP in 2010.
When the uprising against Walker's attack on teachers and other public
workers began in the state capitol in 2011, AFP launched a "Stand With
Walker" campaign that it carried through to the day of the recall vote,
organizing rallies and bus tours, and flooding the airwaves with
advertisements.
By July of last year, Faith and Freedom Coalition was sending out
direct-mail fundraising letters touting its voter canvassing efforts for
the Wisconsin recall. In a
letter
obtained by Religion Dispatches' Sarah Posner, FFC executive director
Gary Marx, who co-founded Century Strategies with Reed, used language
that virtually mirrored the AFP messaging on taxes and labor unions:
Please join...the fight with 100 plus FFC activists who will be going
door-to-door encouraging the Badger State to vote for candidates who
share our values of lower taxes, less government, faith, and who will
stand up to union thugs who support Obama's tax and spend solutions. We
need your financial support to make our Wisconsin get-out-the-vote
program work.
A theme common to Walker's campaign and ads from multiple sources was
the notion that the recall was somehow anti-democratic, when, in fact,
it is about as direct an expression of democracy as one can find. John
Nichols, Wisconsinite and labor advocate, writing in the
Nation, tells of a
ubiquitous ad
carrying that message that appeared in the final days of the campaign,
paid for by a shadowy super-PAC called the Campaign for American Values.
Of the $54,265 in total receipts collected by CAV, per its last FEC
filing, $50,000 came from a single donor,
Rebekah Mercer,
daughter of hedge -fund manager Robert Mercer, who often makes common
cause with David Koch. More than a third of those PAC receipts were
delivered to Herman Cain Solutions, which is run by Cain (who once famously described himself as Charles and David Koch's "
brother from another mother") and Mark Block, the former state director for the Americans for Prosperity Wisconsin chapter. You with me?
So, it was hardly surprising that Reed took up the anti-recall line in
his brief conversation with me after his strategy session.
"I was on the ground in Wisconsin a little bit but I wouldn't claim to
be an expert on it -- but there were folks who were on the ground who
told me that at a certain point, the people of Wisconsin had just had it
up to here," Reed said. "They just wanted it to end. It was like, well,
when does this end? The guy won an election, you're trying to negate an
election, you're trying to recall everybody, and that's what elections
are for. So I think that helped us on the margin..."
The other advantage Reed appears to have had in Wisconsin was
technology. Faith and Freedom Coalition, he said, sent some quarter of a
million text message over the course of the recall campaign. During his
"Keys to Victory" strategy session, Reed urged audience members to
attend a conference session called "Champion the Vote" that would
address the cell-phone-based marketing techniques used by FFC during the
recall campaign, and he talked up the role played by LSN Mobile.
Tech Racket
At the "Champion the Vote" panel, Scott Foernsler, described as the
chief revenue officer of LSN Mobile, was joined by Rick Furr, described
as co-founder and president, of the
Mobile Sports Group,
along with political consultant Adam Jones and FFC Florida coordinator
Brett Doster. Billy Kirkland, the FFC national field director, served as
moderator.
Foernsler presented himself as an expert in micro-targeting, the
marketing technology that allows users to serve up advertisements on
Internet-based platforms customized to whomever is viewing. For
instance, when you go to a Web site that is festooned with ads from
places where you happen to shop -- or whose Web sites you've recently
browsed -- you've been micro-targeted. Another viewer looking at the
same Web site will not see the same ads.
The
New York Times describes political micro-targeting this way:
In the last few years, companies that collect data on how consumers
behave both online and off and what charitable donations they make have
combined that vast store of information with voter registration records.
As a result, microtargeting allows campaigns to put specific messages
in front of specific voters — something that has increased in
sophistication with the large buckets of data available to political
consultants.
Foernsler told his FFC audience that the streams of data now available
to digital advertisers allow political geeks like him to profile
individual voters in much greater detail than was possible before. Where
a voter profile developed by traditional means might be based on the
answers to a series of 10 or so questions, micro-targeters build
databases of voters that answer as many as 65 questions, right down to
the kind of vehicle a target drives.
The digital possibilities also allow for internal polling based on much
larger samples of voters, Foernsler said. Traditional models might work
from a sample of, say, 1,000 voters, but today's technologies make
feasible polling that works with a sample five times as large.
On its Web site, LSN touts its prowess at a particular type of mobile
advertising that is pegged to local news sites through a proprietary app
that, in a May 2011
press release,
LSN says has been downloaded by 5 million smart-phone users. "That
means one in every 60 U.S. households has accessed the app to glean
local content," reads the release."
It's not hard to see where that kind of technology, combined with
micro-targeting marketing strategies, could be very useful in upping
turnout.
Various targeting strategies were deployed in the Wisconsin recall,
added Rick Furr, who spoke as if his company had worked with Faith and
Freedom Coalition in the campaign. In an offhand remark, Furr mentioned
that his Sports Media Group counted among its clients the Home Depot,
the retailer co-founded by right-wing billionaire sugar-daddy
Kenneth Langone.
Furr explained how he targeted somewhere between 17,000 - 20,000
conservative Wisconsin voters for text messages on the recall that
included a link to the Faith and Freedom Coalition voter guide -- a link
that was opened by 30 percent of those who received the text message.
(See graphic, taken from Millennium Marketing's promotional packet,
here.)
Like the Christian Coalition voter guides of yore, the FFC guides list a
number of deceptively framed issues in a table format, with the name
and photo of its preferred candidate (in this case, Scott Walker)
topping a red column noting whether the candidate "SUPPORTS" or
"OPPOSES" those rhetorically presented positions. A photo of the
opposition's candidate (Tom Barrett, of course) tops a blue column.
Faith and Freedom Coalition's guide for the gubernatorial recall
election listed six issues: "abortion on demand," "parental choice in
education," "taxpayer-funded abortion," "same-sex marriage,"
"eliminating the death tax," and "opposes any new taxes on Wisconsin
families."
Text messages, Furr explained, are an especially effective means of
communicating in elections, because, unlike e-mails or snail-mail
appeals, they are almost always opened by recipients.
Nonetheless, Furr also ran an e-mail program for FFC in Wisconsin. One
effort of which he is most proud is the targeting of conservative
small-business executives. Furr said his firm collected more than 51,000
e-mail addresses in that target group, and of those targeted, only 43
individuals opted out of receiving future e-mails.
Furr also lauded the fundraising effectiveness of text messaging,
especially when combined with micro-targeting. As an example, he said he
could reach into databases and filter for Catholics who gave to
particular charities or causes. Then he could solicit donations for the
Faith and Freedom Coalition by text message through a link that
immediately generated a thank-you message to the donor -- all for a mere
50-cent transaction fee. If an organization that raised funds this way
wanted to do follow-up thank-you calls, that could be added to the
package for a low rate of 7.5 percent of the donation, and a call center
would handle the task.
Brett Doster of FFC's Florida chapter mentioned another important
target group for his organization: early voters. In states where early
voting is offered, it's a boon to ideologically driven groups, Doster
said, because people who are inclined to vote early are mostly
"philosophical voters."
To political consultants such as the panel's Adam Jones, early voters
are a key to accurate internal polling, Jones explained, since 50
percent of voters in the demographic groups he's eyeing "vote before
election day." A "dynamic data program" that can identify whomever voted
early can help campaign operatives get a sense of what's taking place
on the ground.
All Not As It Seems: The Millennium Connection
As the panel drew to a close, Rick Furr made a pitch to those in the
room who lead local advocacy groups to engage his services. Those who
requested them could get a packet containing information on the services
his firm provides on their way out of the room.
But the packet Furr was passing out touted not his Sports Media Group,
but the services of Millennium Marketing, the subsidiary of Ralph Reed's
Century Strategy. Tucked inside the folder were two business cards for
Millennium Marketing executive directors: Rick Furr and Scott Foernsler.
I called Furr and Foernsler at the numbers listed on their Millennium
Marketing business cards. In both cases, I got voice mail. Furr's
outgoing message identified him as "Rick Furr of the Sports Media
Group." Neither Furr nor Foernsler returned my calls. At Century
Strategies (Millennium's parent company), I spoke to a woman named
Martha who would not give her last name, but who promised that Ralph
Reed's assistant would call me to confirm questions I had about who was
on Century's payroll. She has yet to call.
One of the case studies included in the packet features the work done
by Furr and Foernsler on behalf of the Faith and Freedom Coalition in
the Wisconsin recall election. It reads:
OBJECTIVE: Reach Wisconsin Republican Christians &
Republican Registered Voters across the state, especially in rural and
exurban areas. We reached over 327,143 Wisconsin Republican Christians
voters [sic] by Email and SMS promoting our voter guide and reminding
people to vote...
Whose voter guide? Millennium Marketing's voter guide or the Faith and Freedom Coalition's? (The accompanying
photo,
on Millennium Marketing stationery, is of the FFC voter guide.) Both
the Faith and Freedom Coalition and Century Strategies occupy the same
building in Duluth, Ga., in suites next door to one another.
The Faith and Freedom Coalition case study in the Millennium Marketing
packet features an endorsement from FFC National Field Director Billy
Kirkland:
We are very happy with the results in being able to target by zip
codes, voter districts, demographics, geographic, lifestyle, consumer
interests, income spending, net worth and behavioral information. Using
interactive Marketing Services pertaining to SMS, Banner Advertising,
and both Consumer & B2B Email. [sic] We have seen positive results
and plan on incorporating this programs into our national & local
campaigns in 2012. Building our database is priceless!
When I reached Kirkland for comment, he seemed caught off-guard by the
inclusion of his quote in the Millennium Marketing packet. "I'd love to
know what that endorsement -- Millennium Marketing?" he said. So I read
the quote to him.
"I use some pretty big words in that quote," he said. Then, saying he had to go into a meeting, he concluded the call.
A Divine Appointment
In his closing remarks at the Faith and Freedom Coalition gala, Reed
stated his goals for the organization, one of which is to have a $100
million budget by 2015.
In 2010, according to FFC's most recently available IRS filing, the
organization took in $5.5 million, and ended up $300,000 in the red. But
its intake was up astronomically from the year before, when in 2009,
FFC claimed receipts of a mere $743,000. If Reed was able to increase
his intake by anywhere near the same margin the following year, his
current budget may be in excess of $25 million.
While media focused their attention on better-known right-wing groups
such as Americans for Prosperity, Reed has been quietly building his
scrappy little organization in the hopes of winning Mitt Romney the
presidency, and a nice financial windfall for Reed, who helped engineer
George W. Bush's 2000 victory for the Republican presidential
nomination.
Calling his faithful to action, Reed urged them to engage their friends
and neighbors in his 2012 voter turnout effort. "I want you to consider
this a divine appointment," he said. Then he left the stage to make way
for Rebecca Kleefisch, lieutenant governor of Wisconsin, the intended
exemplar of what Reed could accomplish on a polarized electoral
landscape.
Petite and attractive, in a shiny green silk skirt suit and with a
Sarah Palin-style hairdo, Kleefisch told the story of the Wisconsin
recall in the right-wing style, painting her opponents as dangerous and
threatening. She, too, called upon the Faith and Freedom Coalition
audience to action.
"My hope is that Wisconsin encourages others to lead with servants' hearts," she said.
This piece has been corrected. The description of the FFC voter
guide previously said it listed candidates' position as "yes" or "no,"
and was framed as all 'yes" notations for Scott Walker.
Adele M. Stan is AlterNet's Washington correspondent. Follow her on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/addiestan
Republicans Cut off Food Assistance to Millions of Americans who own a Car
It can be rightly presumed that extremely severe and unusually cruel conduct that is mutinous to the rules of right or virtuous conduct is considered Draconian, or in 2012 terminology, Republican. It seems that every budget proposal or new legislation submitted by the GOP is another opportunity for them to show their lack of compassion for the American people and apparently there is no end to the depth of depravity they are willing to go to cause suffering in the populace to reward corporate America. This week, Republicans in the House maintained their reputation as Draconian stewards of America’s purse strings and crafted a “compromise” farm bill that cuts billions of dollars from the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) or informally, food stamps, and increases farm subsidies to the corporate agriculture industry.
At a time when 46 million Americans (one half are children) depend on food stamps to avoid dire poverty and daily hunger, Republicans who created this sluggish economy decided that several million poor Americans should lose their eligibility to qualify for assistance because it is the fiscally responsible thing to do. The Republican plan eliminates “categorical eligibility” which means that a family living at or below the poverty line that owns a dependable car will be cut off of food assistance. According to Republicans, a dependable automobile will be figured in to the family’s income and when they are near the eligibility cut-off point, even a moderately-priced used car sends them over the limit. The plan also means that several hundred thousand low-income children will lose access to free or reduced-priced school meals based on the elimination of categorical eligibility. It is the perfect method for Republicans to punish poor Americans by not only cutting off food assistance at home, but completes the hunger cycle by keeping children hungry throughout the school day.
The GOP plan forces low-income families to choose between owning a dependable car to commute to their jobs and feeding their families and it may be a new low for Republicans, but as the past year-and-a-half has shown, they can always exceed their current Draconian spending habits, especially where the poor are concerned. In fact, since they took control of the House in 2011, Republicans have worked diligently to portray any social safety net spending as wasteful regardless that, at its peak, the SNAP program was only .52% of GDP and it kept 5 million Americans from sinking into abject poverty in 2011, and cut the number of children living in extreme poverty by 50%. However, Republicans are unfazed by a UNICEF report that ranked the United States in second place for the percentage of children living in poverty at 23.1% behind Latvia, and above 33 of the world’s richest countries of which America is the richest, so achieving number one status is within their reach.
Republicans have attempted to perpetuate the myth that African Americans and Latinos make up the lion’s share of SNAP recipients, but the truth is that out of 46-million Americans living in poverty, 31 million are white, ten million are African American, and the remainder were Hispanic and Asian. During the Republican presidential primary race, a common theme was that Republicans did not “want to make black people’s lives better by giving them other people’s money” and it plays on the racism rampant in American society. Presidential candidate Willard Romney said “I’m not concerned about the very poor” because there are safety nets, but he plans on throwing 13-million low-income Americans off of food stamps. It is a common theme for Republicans and informs a recent poll that found only 40% of Republicans agree that “it is the responsibility of the government to take care of people who can’t take care of themselves” and it demonstrates a growing lack of compassion for those struggling in the Republican-caused economic malaise. As a contrast, 75% of Democrats say the government should help those who cannot sustain themselves and their position is more in line with public sentiment.
Republicans claim they are being fiscally responsible and doing the will of the American people, but a recent poll by the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) disclosed that 74% of Americans say the SNAP program is very important and 71% say cutting SNAP is the wrong way for Congress to reduce spending. The GOP thinks otherwise and the Paul Ryan and Willard Romney budgets make more drastic cuts to SNAP and increase the deficit by $4 – $6.7 trillion with incredible tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. The FRAC poll also found support for SNAP and ending hunger is strong among all demographics and political groups with 91% of Democrats, 70% of Independents, and 56% of “strong” Republicans believing SNAP is a very important program. Obviously, Republicans in Congress and aspiring to the White House are out of touch with Americans who have a strong moral compass and not tied to enriching the wealthy at the expense of the poor whether they are white, Black, or Hispanic, and especially children.
There are many Republicans who claim there is widespread fraud among SNAP recipients, and the Republican financial guru Paul Ryan said, “you know we get all these reports about how the SNAP program is rife with fraud, how it’s not getting the assistance to the people who need it,” but the truth is the “errors” in administering SNAP payments are within the 1% range and they are not fraud, but mistakes within the program’s administration; the only fraud is from vendors who double-bill and cheat the government with unsubstantiated receipts. The eligibility requirements to receive SNAP are so stringent that it is all but impossible for program participants to qualify much less cheat.
The Republicans’ drastic cuts to SNAP are not for fiscal responsibility, to staunch fraudulent claims, or to teach low-income children the value of work. Their cuts are to make room for more subsidies for corporate agriculture and to create higher poverty numbers, and possibly to reach number one in industrial nations with the most children living in poverty. With their version of the farm bill, they will approach Romania’s 25% of children in poverty and create another 3 million Americans going to bed hungry every night, and eliminating categorical eligibility means a family head gets to choose between feeding their family or selling their used car and walking to work. It is possible that Republicans think SNAP recipients are proud to take government assistance, but the stigma attached to using food stamps creates psychological stress and embarrassment to people who would rather have a living wage job that Republicans will not help create.
Republicans are just cruel and unusually severe in their treatment of Americans whose only crime is living in an economy created by Republicans for the wealthy and their corporations, and are ill-inclined to pass President Obama’s jobs bills when they can fight for more tax cuts for the wealthy and subsidies for corporate agriculture. It has been nearly a year since the President proposed jobs bills the Republicans will not even bring up for discussion, much less a vote, and their big plans before the election are extending Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy, casting symbolic votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and now, cutting millions of low-income Americans’ eligibility for food stamps. There are few words to describe the Republicans in Congress, except that they are evil incarnate and the scourge of this country for sending millions of elderly,
disabled, and children off the SNAP program to make room for more corporate entitlements in the form of subsidies to an industry that is awash in cash, making record profits, and getting free taxpayer money the American people would rather see go to feed the poor; something entirely alien to Republican monsters who are devoid of compassion, unusually severe, lacking a moral compass, and mutinous to the rules of right and virtuous conduct. In other words, they are the scum of the Earth.