Posted by
Mike Bates on Thursday, August 04, 2011 3:08:04 PM
On Wednesday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams reported on another development in the Great Obama Recovery:
"We saw some astounding new numbers that came out today. They showed
the number of Americans relying on food stamps has hit another all-time
record. These numbers would come as a huge disappointment to President
Lyndon Johnson, who launched his War on Poverty back in 1964. Nearly 46
million of your fellow citizens are receiving food stamp assistance.
That represents 21 million American households. Numbers went up in 49
out of 50 states."
Certainly discouraging numbers, but not astounding. Unless, of course,
you somehow expected the machinations of President Barack Obama &
Associates to do anything other than kill any hope of economic
recuperation.
President Lyndon Johnson may have been disappointed, but the chief
warrior in the War on Poverty shouldn't be given total credit, if that's
the correct word, for the food stamp program. That distinction belongs
to another liberal hero, John F. Kennedy.
According to the JFK Presidential Library and Museum's Web site,
on February 2, 1961, Kennedy asked "Congress for program to help end
recession, including food stamps, extended benefits for unemployed
workers and welfare payments for their children." This was followed by
his first executive order, which announced a
three-year food stamp "pilot" program. We all know what happens to
temporary government programs; his successor and Congress made it
permanent with the Food Stamp Act of 1964:
The Department (of Agriculture) estimated that participation in a
national FSP would eventually reach 4 million, at a cost of $360 million
annually.
Kennedy brother-in-law Sargent Shriver ran LBJ's Office of Economic
Opportunity. In 1967, when about $700 million a year was devoted to
food assistance programs, Shriver estimated that another billion dollars
would permanently solve the problem of hunger in America. That was $66
billion ago.
If anything's astounding, it's that most in the mainstream media never
question why, after trillions of tax dollars spent on fighting poverty,
there's so little, if any, improvement. And it's questionable that
Kennedy and Johnson, both of whom thought Washington had the solutions,
would be all that disappointed to see so many Americans dependent on
government for help.