Over 6 Million People Off Food Stamps Since Trump Became President

Unsurprisingly, Democrats are beside themselves with this new report.

Fox News reports:

Among the accomplishments touted by President Trump during his State of the Union address was the drastic decrease in the number of Americans on food stamps, but Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., claimed during an emotional House hearing that the government has its collective head in the sand when it comes to poverty statistics.

Placing the blame on the government as a whole, Ocasio-Cortez claimed that Washington lawmakers are refusing to acknowledge the severity of poverty in the United States.

"Seven million people have not been lifted off of food stamps in this country, they were kicked off food stamps in this country!" Ocasio-Cortez said. "And people are going hungry. They are going hungry because we like to use the word lift instead of the truth, which was kicked. And we are booting millions of Americans into the streets because we want to believe and dupe ourselves into thinking that we’re doing better. We are not. We’re not."

The New York congresswoman's diatribe was part of a hearing before the House Oversight Government Operations Subcommittee titled “A Threat to America’s Children: The Trump Administration’s Proposed Changes to the Poverty Line Calculation.” It was the first of four such hearings taking place before House Oversight subcommittees Wednesday and Thursday.

Ocasio-Cortez has sponsored a bill, known as The Recognizing Poverty Act, that would have Congress determine a new, updated poverty line that takes into account factors such as family size and geography.

"For so long in our country, poverty has been a taboo word," she said. "It is something that we're not allowed to talk about. It is something that we have difficulty acknowledging, and even in the presence of this legislation. This legislation that I am putting forward along with my colleagues is literally just to recognize poverty in America. That's it. Just directing someone, agencies to just measure the level of poverty in this country."

The Office of Management and Budget has proposed changing the role of inflation in the formula for calculating poverty. It would use a lower estimated inflation rate, which could result in fewer people qualifying for government assistance. A senior administration official told The New York Times in May 2019 that restricting access to programs was not the government's goal, and that it had been 40 years since the factoring of inflation had been altered.

The Western Journal also had this to report:

The SNAP program cost American taxpayers $63.7 billion in fiscal year 2017, when Trump took office. During the 2019 federal fiscal year, which ended in September, the program cost $53.7 billion.

In his Feb. 4 State of the Union address, Trump noted that the reduction in the food stamp rolls is part of an overall economic revival that has been the hallmark of his administration, according to a White House copy of the speech.

“Since my election, we have created 7 million new jobs — 5 million more than government experts projected during the previous administration. The unemployment rate is the lowest in over half a century. And very incredibly, the average unemployment rate under my administration is lower than any administration in the history of our country,” Trump said.

“Under the last administration, more than 10 million people were added to the food stamp rolls.  Under my administration, seven million Americans have come off food stamps, and 10 million people have been lifted off of welfare,” he said, referencing figures current as of the time of his speech.

“In eight years under the last administration, over 300,000 working-age people dropped out of the workforce.  In just three years of my administration, 3.5 million people — working-age people — have joined the workforce.”

The White House has noted that the roaring economy has brought Americans back to work.

“The prime-age labor force has grown by 2.1 million people since the election, reversing losses under the prior administration’s expansion period, which totaled approximately 1.5 million people. This evidence suggests that the labor market’s revival over the past three years is not a continuation of past trends, but instead a result of President Trump’s pro-growth policies,” the White House wrote in a December report on the labor force, the number of Americans working or seeking work.