During an exchange with Fox News analyst Juan Williams during a debate in South Carolina on Jan. 16, Gingrich defended previous statements that poor kids lack a strong work ethic, that they should be put to work as janitors (child labor laws be damned), and that black Americans should “demand jobs, not food stamps.”


“Well, first of all, Juan,” Gingrich said, “the fact is, more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history.”

This statement, while technically true, is no more reliable as a factual observation than other conservatives’ claims that Obama has governed during the highest unemployment spike in decades, or that his presidency has overseen the biggest national debt in history.

All three statements may be true on their face, but they lay responsibility for the greatest recession since the Great Depression at the feet of a man who wasn’t even president when the economic floor caved.

Making such an observation of “fact” isn’t blame-shifting, despite what any Teabagger (or Puritopian) readers may claim. It’s contextualizing.

All I will say is ANY president would have the same issues, as businesses sent jobs willy-nilly overseas.

He might have the greatest number of Americans on welfare, but in the "prosperous" years we didn't have over 300 million people either.

nuff said.

Non-partisan “facts and data” show that while Obama did indeed oversee sharp increases in the national debt, those increases—a direct response to the recession—nonetheless constitute a decrease compared to the reign of Republican President George W. Bush. (As a side note, Bush didn’t create or save 6.8 million jobs when he expanded the national debt by 89 percent.)

Non-partisan “facts and data” show that while Obama did preside during the highest unemployment rate in decades, no president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has had to combat a crumbling economy.

Lastly, non-partisan “facts and data” show that while Obama has indeed dished out a significant amount of food stamps to hungry, poverty-stricken Americans, the increase from 28.2 million recipients from 2008 to the present—46.2 million recipients in 2011—constitutes an increase of roughly 64 percent. In contrast, the last Republican president oversaw an increase in food stamps recipients of…64 percent!

In layman’s terms, the “food stamp president” has been more economical about feeding the poor during the greatest recession in history than Bush was during steady, uninterrupted economic growth.


None of that really matters for whatever dismal amount of sane progressives remain in America. What matters to most people, because it matters to the mainstream media, is that Gingrich continues to call Obama “the food stamp president,” and some people find such a statement offensive.


http://angryblackladychronicles.com/2012/01/18/barack-obama-food-stamp-president-legacy-or-myth/

true

Just unadulterated notes on what happened. Business wanted to raise profits so sent jobs to where labor was cheap. We suffer because of this.