42 Million Americans On Food Stamps Now; Need Rising By 20% Per Year

Are you one of the lucky one-in-eight Americans who would go hungry if not for government-provided debit cards that can be used to buy food? The average monthly benefit is $134, and that's generally provided in the form of an EBT card that can be used to buy food. JPMorgan provides a lot of those cards and the infrastructure behind it -- there's your financial services recovery, ha? -- and the director of that program says he's seeing "continued volume increases, at a level that's not been seen before." How big an increase?20% this year, and that's after rising 25% last year.

And JPMorgan expects another big spike as millions more long-term unemployed run out their extended jobless benefits and need to go onto food stamps to survive.

Luckily for jobless, poor, hungry Americans, Newt Gingrich has decided they will be an effective punching bag for next month's midterms! Everybody hates people when they're down, right? Poor people suck! 

MINNEAPOLIS — Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is advising Republican candidates on November's ballots to frame the choice for voters between Democrats as "the party of food stamps" while selling the GOP as "the party of paychecks."

[...]

"Most Americans would like to get a paycheck," Gingrich said. "Most Americans would not like to be forced to have food stamps handed out by liberal Democrats."

Can you imagine accepting government help from a dirty fucking "liberal Democrat"? This is why all the out-of-work construction laborers and gung-ho Iraq veterans with PTSD who for some reason identify as Republicans have all quit taking all government handouts! No more food stamps or farm subsidies or Medicare or Social Security or Head Start or VA hospitals or school lunch programs. It's especially heartening to see all the angry old Fox News viewers angrily marching out of the socialist Senior Centers and refusing those lunches five days a week. [ Bloomberg / AP ]