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More Republican Lies on Food Stamps

June 23, 2014

It’s no secret that Republicans tend to generally be critics of the food stamps program, calling it a waste of federal dollars that could well go elsewhere. They also like to misuse facts and data to say that food stamps recipients are lazy and unmotivated, and that removing the food stamps program would inspire them to work hard, as an American should.

But a new article in PolitiFact shows that Republicans have taken it one step further: they’re saying that for every one job created under the Obama administration, 75 people went on food stamps. Let’s dig into the real facts and see what’s what.

How is a Country’s Wellbeing Evaluated?

There are many different ways to measure a country’s health, depending on what angle you want to take. You could look at the value of its currency, how much it does in yearly trades and sales, the allocation of its budget’s funds, or even the education levels of its citizens. But for this article, we’ll be taking a look at job growth and food stamps use.

Food Stamps Use

The most recent data on the USDA site says that a total of 46,097,719 people, or 22,476,109 households are on food stamps. Per person, this works out to $125.29, and per household, it’s $259.96 per month (all information from March 2014). In a country with a population of about 319,000,000, that works out to roughly 14% of all Americans being on food stamps, or about 1 in 7 people.

At a state level, the most recent data shows that a bit of a rollercoaster in terms of an increase/decrease in food stamps use. When comparing March 2014 to February 2014 (the most recent data given on the USDA site), some states did pretty well. Idaho decreased its usage by -0.7%, Kansas and Louisiana each by -0.9%, North Carolina by -1.5%, Oklahoma by -1.7%, and South Carolina by a whopping -12.2%.

On the flip side of the equation, other states didn’t fare as well: Colorado was up by 3.3%, Illinois by 2.5%, Massachusetts with 1.6%, Nevada by 3.0%, and New Jersey up by 4.5%.

In total, the national average rose by 0.3% between February and March of this year, with March 2014 actually showing a -8.9% improvement from March of 2013.

Job Growth

Reuters maintains that the American economy is continuing to grow, albeit at a bit of a slower pace this May. They report that employers boosted their labor by 218,000 jobs last month; it’s growth, yes, but 70,000 fewer jobs than April 2014.

However, Reuters notes that May’s job growth, however lower it may be, is still stronger than the six-month average before it. Part of the reason for this sluggishness is the brutal winter we went through, with the freezing temperatures affecting just about every sector. Closely related is the unemployment rate, which grew a hair to 6.4 percent (one tenth of a percentage point).

PolitiFact: 75 People Did Not Go on Food Stamps for Every One Obama-Created Job

In 2012, the conservative Weekly Standard published an article from the Republican Staff of the Senate Budget Committee with the headline “For Every Person Added to Jobs Rolls Since January 2009, 75 People Added to Food Stamp Rolls”.

In terms of actual numbers, the Republicans who released this report were claiming that between January 2009 and October 2012, there were 194,000 jobs in the economy…and 14.7 million new faces on food stamps. PolitiFact states this is a 75-to-1 ratio, which is a number we’ll come back to later on.

What’s the Real Story Behind Job Growth and Food Stamps?

PolitiFact points out the period the Republicans used — late 2012, to be really specific — was the worst in the Obama administration by a long shot, and the only time in his administration it was that bad.

Before that, the article notes, job growth was actually negative and couldn’t have been used for the Republicans’ calculation (e.g. it makes a lot more sense to correlate job losses with food stamps rises than it would to say the POTUS created such lousy jobs, the country was in a stampede to the food stamps line).

However, and as PolitiFact points out, you can pick any start time under the Obama administration and tweak it to suit your own purposes, which the Republicans did by zeroing in on the worst job growth/food stamps data in Obama’s tenure.

We tried to highlight that in the food stamps section above by showing the difference in some states’ use of food stamps over a one-month period; associating it with job growths over the same period could — and would — show similar information for some states as it did in the Republicans’ report.

The article points out several key points:

•The total number of new jobs between January 2009 (when Obama was sworn in) and April 2014 is 4,276,000
•Jobs increased by 7,635,000 from July 2009 to April 2014
•Jobs increased by 8,597,000 from February 2010 to April 2014
•The average number of food stamps recipients in fiscal year 2009 (half Bush, half Obama) was 33,490,000
•The average number of food stamps recipients in fiscal year 2014 so far is 46,788,311
•The difference in the number of food stamps recipients between 2009 and 2014 is 13,298,000

Returning to our ratio of 75-to-1 in terms of job growth and food stamps, we can see that there’s just no way the math works out in the Republicans’ favor. Depending on the part of Obama’s term you’re looking at, the ratio of jobs created to people on food stamps is between 1.5-to-1 and 3.1-to-1, neither of which are anywhere close to the 75-to-1 purported by Republicans.

We call a fail on Republicans for trying to skew food stamps statistics. Again.

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