In his latest missive posted at Human Events, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich offers more detail about his designation of Democrats as the party of food stamps and his own Republicans as the party of paychecks:
Last week, Speaker Pelosi again made the absurd claim that food stamps and unemployment insurance are the best way to create jobs, rather than serve as a safety net for those who have lost their jobs. ?
In addition, Speaker Pelosi hysterically accused me of trying to ?stomp on the poor.?
Speaker Pelosi and the rest of the food stamp party are desperately trying to spin the accurate and devastating contrast between the Democratic party of food stamps and the Republican party of paychecks as a threat to take food stamps away from the poor and unemployed who need them.But they ignore the actual historic record that repudiates their baseless attack. During my tenure as Speaker, we didn?t eliminate the food stamp program; we were, however, able to reduce the number of people receiving food stamps by pursuing paycheck policies instead of food stamp policies. Millions of poor and unemployed people went off food stamps as they took up jobs and work.
It may cause Speaker Pelosi a conniption to hear it, but it turns out that paycheck policies are better for the poor than food stamp policies. Far from stomping on the poor, the Republican Congress from 1995-1999 did more to help the poor by giving them jobs than the Democratic Congress has during the last four years under Speaker Pelosi.
Drawing the contrast between food stamp policies and paycheck policies is not an attack on food stamps or on those who depend on the program for nutrition. It is an attack on the job-killing policies of the Democrats that have led to more Americans needing food stamps.
