Gaslighting Excellence |

So before I even begin to discuss the elements of this self-inflating piece of drivel, let’s review who is promoting this.

The Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA, another one of those wonderful WrongWing groups that attempts to mask its bias by choosing a moniker that implies it is neutral and with America’s best interests at heart) is the author of this opinion (thankfully, opinion) piece in today’s Wall Street Journal. This entity was formed in 2011 with the express purposes of exploiting teenage workers (by removing restriction on their hours and places where they may work), Medicaid expansion to cover insurance for America’s lower income folks, cutting SNAP (the new term for Food Stamps), and perhaps WIC (supplemental nutrition for women, infants and children).

Given that background, you can see that they would certainly not be in favor of the expanded benefits afforded folks during the pandemic, to ensure those who lost their jobs or were at the bottom echelon of pay rates could feed their families.

Now let’s address the “facts” these folks present.(By the way, the article is written in the third person for the Foundation- so you won’t necessarily pick up the fact that these are their opinions and not some other [perhaps highly regarded] entity.)

The first claim is that the expansion of food stamps has hurt the economy, sending millions out of the workforce while raising everyone’s grocery prices.

Hmm. Folks were already out of jobs when the pandemic started- and there was NO expansion of benefits then. But, why should that stop them from trying to confuse Americans?

And, with 12.5% of the American population on food stamps, the extra benefits provided during the pandemic came to $ 1.5 billion a month at best. (It was 40 cents more a meal at the individual level.) It gets better- the FGA this $ 1.5 billion annual cost will miraculously total $ 250 billion over a decade. (I think they need to buy a new calculator.)

Now, even the FGA agrees with the analyses that for every $ 1 increase in food benefits, the price of food rises by 8 cents. That means this increase raised our food costs by less than $ 121 million or 36 cents for each of us. That’s not much of a penalty to insure that our fellow Americans don’t go hungry.

The FGA further claims that Biden did this in direct violation of federal law. Hmm. I guess when Congress passes laws to increase benefits (a) it’s all the President’s fault and (b) Congress has no right to set budget. Yeah. Another canard from the FGA.

Here comes the next claim. The food stamp benefit caused 2.4 million folks to leave work, so they would cut their income to get 40 cents more a meal. Despite the absurdity of that argument, there is no evidence that lower income folks quit their jobs (they may have been laid off)– most of those who quit their jobs were middle class or higher income folks.

I guess it’s not just the Chinese and Russian trolls that are trying to gaslight Americans.

Caveat emptor!