Obama Free to Go on Advertising Food Stamps in Mexico
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On January 15, 2014 @ 6:46 pm In The Point | No Comments
Magnet? What illegal immigration magnet? That’s immigration reform magnet, now.
The omnibus spending bill before Congress continues to fund U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) advertising programs for food stamps in foreign countries like Mexico, Breitbart News has learned.
The bill was hashed out between House Appropriations Committee chairman Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY) and Senate Appropriations Committee chairwoman Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD). The funding will continue despite claims in a document the House Appropriations Committee published that the bill contains a “prohibition” on such programs. Page three of this press document states regarding food stamps that the omnibus spending bill contains a “prohibition on advertisements or outreach with foreign governments.”
The entire paragraph that contains that statement reads: Requirements for the Secretary of Agriculture to help weed out and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in the SNAP program – including a directive to ban fraudulent vendors, and a prohibition on advertisements or outreach with foreign governments.
However, upon reading through the text of the bill and the bill summary explanatory document, there is no such “prohibition” included in it. Instead, the explanatory document that Rogers published just states that USDA is “strongly discouraged” from advertising food stamps programs with foreign governments.
The more things claim to have been changed, the more they stay exactly the same. A Republican deal with a Democrat invariably ends with the Democrat getting everything he wants on policy issues and the Republican getting bragging rights based on meaningless language.
Similarly, during the Senate Budget Committee markup of the Democratic budget that Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) offered last year, Sessions offered an amendment that would have ended the USDA’s partnership with Mexico on food stamp advertising in that country. Senate Democrats unanimously voted against that Sessions amendment.
And let’s not forget that…
Department of Agriculture personnel in the Obama administration have met with Mexican Government officials dozens of times since the president took office to promote nutrition assistance programs — notably food stamps — among Mexican Americans, Mexican nationals and migrant communities in America.
“Nearly 1 in 6 people living in the US are now on food stamps,” Sessions noted. “How can the administration justify trying to increase that number through outreach on the foreign soil of fifty consulates?”
Somebody’s got to move here and vote for him six times.
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