Newt Gingrich 'Doesn't Understand' Why Food Stamps Are a Good Thing

Drama! Last week, a war-of-words went down between former Speaker of the House (and current insufferable windbag) Newt Gingrich and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi about the stimulative effect of food stamps. Allow me break it down:

October 5: Gingrich issues a memo to Republican candidates in the upcoming Congressional race that calls Democrats the "party of food stamps" and urges candidates to brand the GOP as the "party of paychecks." He writes, "It is an unassailable fact that in June, more food stamps were distributed by the government than ever before in American history.  (It turns out that Barack Obama's idea of spreading the wealth around was spreading more food stamps around.)"

October 6: Pelosi responds to the Gingrich memo, noting that "there is some subliminal message that is being sent out there about us and them, meaning people who need food stamps and the rest of the country, which I think is an unfortunate course to go down. It is the biggest bang for the buck when you do food stamps and unemployment insurance — the biggest bang for the buck."

Later that night: Gingrich fires back at Pelosi in a FOX News interview: "She says that for every dollar a person receives in food stamps, $1.79 is put back in the economy ... Well, you know, I carry around a bumper sticker that says 2 plus 2 equals 4. So I'd be very curious how a dollar given to somebody becomes a $1.79. And I think if we could get that to work with the U.S. Treasuries, so if people gave the Treasury $1,000, it became $1,790, we could pay off the federal debt and never worry about spending or anything. I mean, I — you know, somehow, I don't understand how liberal math turns $1 into $1.79."

A warning: don't be fooled by Gingrich's faux naiveté about food stamps. He is as aware as anyone else that food stamps really do have a stimulative effect on the economy. (In fact, the effect is even stronger than what Pelosi claimed — for every dollar spent on food stamps, $1.84 is put back into the economy, according to the USDA).

Gingrich wasn't really debating Nancy Pelosi though, so the facts hardly matter. What he was really doing was planting a message to FOX News viewers: food stamps are bad, so don't vote for politicians who support them. And that, my friends, is how to conduct a hit job on a top-notch government anti-poverty program, and by extension the poor people it serves.

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