Will Hines

salgentile:

abbyjean:

1. A large and growing share of SNAP households are working households(see chart). In 2010, more than three times as many SNAP households worked as relied solely on welfare benefits for their income.
2. SNAP responded quickly and effectively to the recession.
3. Today’s large SNAP caseloads mostly reflect the extraordinarily deep and prolonged recession and the weak recovery. Workers who are unemployed for a long time are more likely to deplete their assets, exhaust unemployment insurance, and turn to SNAP for help, since it is one of the few safety net programs available for many long-term unemployed workers.
4. SNAP has one of the most rigorous quality control systems of any public benefit program.
5. SNAP’s recent growth is temporary. CBO predicts that SNAP spending will fall as a share of the economy as the economy recovers and the Recovery Act benefit increases expire.

(click through for expanded discussions and illustrative charts.)

Newt Gingrich called President Obama “the food stamp president.” Aside from this being both wrong and offensive, it’s actually not a mark of shame either. To expand on Point #2 above, “food stamps” are actually one of the most effective things you can do during a recession to to stimulate the economy. In fact, food stamps are much more effective at stimulating economic growth during a recession than policies favored by Gingrich, like tax cuts for rich people.

A “multiplier analysis” conducted by the Congressional Budget Office last year found that “transfer payments” from the federal government to the states for social welfare programs like unemployment benefits and food stamps generated 2.1 dollars of economic impact for every 1 dollar spent. That makes food stamps basically one of the most effective things you can do to stimulate the economy during a recession. By contrast, a one-year tax cut for high earners actually only produced 0.6 dollars of economic growth for every 1 dollar spent — a negative impact on economic growth!

So calling President Obama “the food stamp president” is offensive and wrong, but it’s also not an insult, politically speaking. Calling him the “tax cuts for rich people” president would be much, much more damning, according to the numbers.