Now why didn’t someone at the USDA think of this? Apparently, we’re so fat as a nation that we’re wasting money on food stamps. At least that’s what Rick Santorum thinks.
Santorum told the group he would cut the food stamp program, describing it as one of the fastest growing programs in Washington, D.C.
Forty-eight million people are on food stamps in a country with 300-million people, said Santorum.
“If hunger is a problem in America, then why do we have an obesity problem among the people who we say have a hunger program?” Santorum asked.
As Igor Volsky at ThinkProgress.org points out, Santorum is talking out of his arse.
The cost of the food stamp program — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — has jumped because more Americans are out of work and wages are down, not because of obesity rates.
Santorum’s claims remind me of the RWNJ line during the busing debates in Denver when I was growing up. Instead of just coming out and saying they didn’t want their kids to go to school with Blacks or Chicanos, they claimed they were against busing for pollution reasons. It was bullshit then, and Santorum’s argument is bullshit now. Really, Rick. Why don’t you just wave a picture of a welfare queen as red meat for your acolytes?