Ronald Reagan had his welfare queen and now Louis Goober Gohmert Piles has his king crab leg queen:
The Texas congressman complained that Democrats had portrayed Republicans as evil because they supported a measure to cut nearly 2 million low-income people off the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which would mainly impact working families with children.
On the other hand, Gohmert said, poor people were using food stamps
to buy food that other Americans could not afford. He claimed his
“broken-hearted” constituents had repeatedly told him they had seen
people use food stamps to buy king crab legs.“Because
he does pay income tax, he doesn’t get more back than he pays in, he is
actually helping pay for king crab legs when he can’t pay for them for
himself,” Gohmert explained.“How can you begrudge somebody who feels that way,” he added. “How
can you begrudge anyone who steps up on behalf of constituents who feel
that way. We don’t want anyone to go hungry, and from the amount of
obesity in this country by people who we’re told do not have enough to
eat, it does seem like we could have a debate about this issue without
allegations about wanting to slap down or starve children.”
Dollars to overpriced donuts that this “witness” to wanton (wonton?) extravagance does not exist. I guess Loony Louis is trying to prove that he’s a mainstream GOPer by recycling one of St Ronnie’s greatest hits. Then again, Bob Dole was one of the fathers of the Food Stamp program, which was devised to help farmers and poor folks alike. We used to call that a win-win situation.
As always, Louis Goober Gohmert Piles has me feeling more crabby than kingly.
they always ignore the welfare KINGS. who suck off FAR MORE money from the federal govt. gomer shirley is going to purgatory for the terminally stoopid.
Gohmert is proudly ignorant.
Getting king crab legs on $4.50 a day food stamp allowance takes some sort of math with which I am unfamiliar.
I always wonder about these people who “witness” food stamp users buying this extravagant stuff. Nobody pays any more with actual food *stamps.* They use debit cards that don’t look all that different from the other cards that more prosperous people swipe at the cash register — you have to look pretty closely to tell the difference.
So are Gohmert’s informants looking over the shoulders of the people in front of them in the checkout line? Sounds impolite, at best.
Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, the legislature is very concerned that SNAP participants are using their food stamp money to buy inexpensive food, like pasta, white rice and the occasional bag of Doritos. You can’t win.
A number of times I’ve been in line behind people using SNAP cards or, back in the day, food stamps. Nope, no crab legs, but lots of stuff like generic cereal, bread, lunch meat, canned soup…things that either don’t spoil or don’t require a lot of work to put together.
Why are they using SNAP cards? Well…it’s none of my damn business, first, and second, I doubt anyone really prefers them to cash, debit, or credit cards. In most cases folks seem to be kind of palming their card, probably hoping some loud mouthed asshole doesn’t start whining a vineyard about tax dollars, etc.
And yeah, the money does go to farmers in the end…or retailers, like Wal-Mart, which makes a ton of money off of SNAP. But of course the whiners never bitch about them…
So are Gohmert’s informants looking over the shoulders of the people in front of them in the checkout line? Sounds impolite, at best.
It’s very simple. Non-white people buying nice food must be using food stamps to do it. Especially if they’re not fancily dressed. So if you see a black lady buying caviar or whatever the Checkout Aisle Outrage of the Day is, you know right away that the dollars of hard-working Americans are being wasted. /Gohmert
Judging checkout purchases is a slippery slope. I once went up to the cashier with nothing in my basket but a bottle of Bailey’s and a rubber nipple.
A.
Its the ol’ lobster and steak thing:
http://www.snopes.com/photos/signs/receipt.asp
RWNJs love to trot this one out. Some guy used his girlfriend’s card to buy groceries to resell later and all of a sudden thousands of people have to suffer for it.
“Judging checkout purchases is a slippery slope. I once went up to the cashier with nothing in my basket but a bottle of Bailey’s and a rubber nipple.”
Yeah, you wouldn’t *BELIEVE* the looks that I got one Halloween, when all I wanted to buy was some sewing needles, razor blades, and apples.
I had sort of the opposite thing happen to me once — I was buying my usual sort of groceries, but with a few more things labelled “organic” in the mix because they happened to be cheaper than the regular, and why not? Suddenly, this woman behind me goes, “Oh my god, look at that, all those vegetables and organic stuff and I’m buying chips and frozen pizza! I feel so guilty!”
Then she turned to me and asked me how I did it, and I said, “Well, when you’re allergic to dairy products, you don’t buy a lot of frozen pizza or tv dinners.” She kind of went “Hm.” Funnily enough, most people don’t want to trade.
“Because he does pay income tax, he doesn’t get more back than he pays in…”
Gohmert does understand that the ENTIRE state of Texas gets back more in Federal Tax Dollars than they pay in, right?
I suggest that his every utterance be known as a Gohmert Pile.