Alan Grayson Goes After Wal-Mart

This is why I'm glad to see Alan Grayson back in Congress.

Speaking to Current TV host Cenk Uygur on Monday’s episode of “The Young Turks,” Grayson called Walmart “the largest recipient of public aid in the country,” saying their low wages force workers to take food stamps, housing assistance and Medicaid just to get by.

“The taxpayer pays for the earned income credit,” he said. “The taxpayer pays for Medicaid. The taxpayer pays for unemployment insurance when they cut hours down. And the taxpayer pays for other forms of public assistance like food stamps. I think the taxpayer is getting fed up of paying these things when, in fact, Walmart could give every employee its got, even the CEO, a 30 percent raise and still be profitable.”

While all that is true, it neglects the very simple fact that Wal-Mart is also paid heavily in public aid money.  Meaning its customers spend millions of dollars in food stamps every year at the extremely large retailer.  Spending for the federal food stamp program, SNAP, was $71.8 billion last year.  Though it's very hard to state how much of that goes directly to Wal-Mart, it's safe to assume it's in the billions.  

For instance, in the State of Oklahoma alone, in a two year time period the Wal-Mart stores located there received $500 million in food stamps.  That's one scarcely populated state in just two years.  So yes it's safe to say when you add in Grayson's point about low wages, earned income credit and health care, Wal-Mart is the largest recipient of public aid in the country.  No doubt about it.  It's time they give back.

Paul Ryan and Social Security, It Doesn't Get Any Worse

Paul Ryan on Social Security, 2005: “Social Security right now is a collectivist system... It’s a welfare transfer system... Autopilot will bring more government, more collectivism, more centralized government, if we do not succeed in switching these programs and reforming these programs from what some people call a defined benefit system, to a defined contribution system.”

Paul Ryan, 2012, talking about his above comment: Asked about those words Saturday, Ryan said that did not represent his thinking about the retirement program.  "I don't think of it like that," he said, saying his concern about Social Security is that younger workers today will get a "negative" rate of return for their retirement on the money they pay into payroll taxes.

So what happened in those 7 years?  What has changed his mind so drastically?  The most obvious is he is now on a Presidential Ticket and calling the most popular social program in America a socialized, collectivist welfare system looks really, really bad.

What do we get from this?  Seriously, what can we assume from Ryan's two completely different comments about Social Security?  One, we could do what Republicans do and say that Ryan has a secret agenda that he doesn't want people to know, it being he wants to take Social Security away from people.  Or two, we can assume he is trying to have it both ways by calling it one thing in front of one group and an altogether different thing while speaking to a another group.  

Or we could just do this.  Let's look at what Paul Ryan has done or has tried to do while serving in Congress in regards to Social Security. 

2005 was a big year for Ryan and Social Security.  He pushed President Bush for a plan that would defund Social Security by allowing workers to invest their payroll taxes into the market, instead of Social Security.  Bush instead went with a slightly different privatized plan, which Ryan also supported, and the public hated it.

Additionally in 2005, he sponsored a bill that would have allowed workers to funnel an average of 6.4 percent of their 12.4 percent payroll-tax contribution to a private account.  The Social Security Administration concluded Ryan's plan would require $225 billion annually in new revenue to provide for current benefits.  In other words, Ryan's plan defunded Social Security.

In 2007 he proposed yet another a bill that would invest 50% of FICA into personal market accounts.

In 2010, he again promoted the idea of defunding Social Security by investing 1/3 of payroll taxes into the market.  Even way back In 2000, he voted yes on reducing payroll taxes that fund Social Security, or better said he voted to defund Social Security. 

His entire congressional career he has pushed to do away with Social Security.  In fact, that's the only record he has on Social Security.  And now we're supposed to believe he he doesn't feel that way anymore? 

House Repubs Vote to Cut Food Stamps by $33 Billion

How or why a poor person could ever vote Republican is beyond me.

Red States Are Welfare States

I'm so glad to see Talking Points Memo doing more and more graphs.  Their latest is a dandy.

Again, proving the supposed Super Tough Macho Conservative Small Government Republicans aversion to welfare and Big Government is a complete hoax.  It has to be the biggest hoax of the the last 75 years.

Self Delusion's Hidden Government

Just in time for today's budget talk, the Times did a bang up job with a very informative story over the weekend.  It hits upon a constant theme, not only on this blog, but in public conversation about government.  What is government's role to the citizenry?

Sure, as you all know, I love to poke fun at the tea baggers.  They are crazy, no doubt.  They are no more against Big Government than they are against oxygen.  They're simply against other people besides themselves benefiting from government (especially when Democrats are in charge).  Yet, for all the fun I poke at them, their delusion is actually common among the public as a whole and not just their fringe GOP group.

Here's the overall theme facing government as viewed by the opposition to the current administration and why it boggles any rational thinking:

"LINDSTROM, Minn. — Ki Gulbranson owns a logo apparel shop, deals in jewelry on the side and referees youth soccer games. He makes about $39,000 a year and wants you to know that he does not need any help from the federal government.

He says that too many Americans lean on taxpayers rather than living within their means. He supports politicians who promise to cut government spending. In 2010, he printed T-shirts for the Tea Party campaign of a neighbor, Chip Cravaack, who ousted this region’s long-serving Democratic congressman.

Yet this year, as in each of the past three years, Mr. Gulbranson, 57, is counting on a payment of several thousand dollars from the federal government, a subsidy for working families called the earned-income tax credit. He has signed up his three school-age children to eat free breakfast and lunch at federal expense. And Medicare paid for his mother, 88, to have hip surgery twice."

Huh?

Anyone decades from now wanting to look back and see the unimaginative and very unrealistic view of the role of government and how this Congress is the most unpopular and most unproductive in history, this story should suffice.  It's really a wonder we've survived as a people this long.

Visualizing Romney's "Safety Net" For The Poor

Contributed by Michael Bloomer while locked in a closet by his beloved wife, Sue

In a fit of what can only be viewed as overconfidence after his win in the Florida primary last week, Mitt Romney accidentally told the truth on CNN the day after his win. His signal - in every sense of the word - quote:

"I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it."

The simple fact is, of course, that Governor Romney has endorsed draconian budget cuts that would rip that net to shreds. He also spent a great deal of time at Bain Capital as a financial finagler hatching deals that fairly often added to the "very poor" population.

In his remarkable quote, too, he demonstrates what everyone on the left has known all along, and what even the right wing of the GOP is now realizing:  Mitt Romney believes that the "safety net" is a good enough place to be. He simply has no informed sense that life in the safety net is desperate, heartbreaking, and usually inescapable. In this, Romney is aristocratically tempered;  he's not merely tone deaf, he's stone deaf. Stone deaf to nearly 20% of the population is not a good characteristic in a United States President, particularly as we move ever closer to the edge of a revolutionary precipice.

Romney, though, is utterly astounding, in a very bad way. He's banal. Unlike Newt, there's, nothing fancy about him, nothing Gingrichian in rabidness. Unlike Paul or Santorum, Mitt's boring about the poverty thing, he simply cannot think "poor," cannot will up legitimate or sincere concern.

Wondering about that attribute the other day, I put together my image of what Romney - and the other GOP candidates - might actually conceive as a laissez faire "safety net." Gazing through the lens of their dog eat dog world view, it's a dark image indeed.