Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said Thursday he is willing to go before the NAACP and urge blacks to demand paychecks, not food stamps.
Gingrich told a town hall meeting at a senior center in Plymouth, N.H., that if the NAACP invites him to its annual convention this year, he’d go there and talk about “why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.”
He also said he’d pitch a new Social Security program aimed at helping young people, particularly African-American males, who he said get the smallest return on Social Security.
Gingrich routinely lambasts President Barack Obama as the “best food stamp president in American history.” He also has spoken previously about welcoming an invitation from the NAACP to speak and has been critical of GOP candidates who have not accepted such an invitation.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People had no immediate comment on Gingrich’s remarks. His campaign spokesman, R.C. Hammond, said the former Georgia congressman has often said the GOP needs to be inclusive of all Americans.
“He has said since he became a presidential candidate that any Republican should always accept an invitation to speak to the NAACP on any topic,” Hammond said.
Gingrich’s comments follow those by rival candidate Rick Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania who said Sunday that he did not want to “make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.”
Santorum’s comments were criticized by National Urban League President Marc H. Morial as pandering to racist elements within the GOP. Morial also said that 70 percent of people on food stamps are white. The Agriculture Department does not break down food stamp participation rates by race.
NAACP President Ben Jealous also criticized Santorum’s remarks.
Food stamp participation and costs have risen under Obama, from 28.2 million participants at a cost of $37.6 billion in 2008 to 44.7 million participants at a cost of $75.3 billion last year, according to federal data of what is officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The increases followed the steep economic downturn that began in 2008.
Gingrich said if he has a chance to go before the NAACP, he would explain a “brand-new Social Security opportunity” for young people, “which would be particularly good for African-American males, because they are the group that gets the smallest return on Social Security.”
(Source: Fox News)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
10 Responses
You have to be interested in a paycheck (i.e. – work!!) in order to get one. Most of them would rather not (I don’t know why you would – when you can get WIC, Food stamps, cash assistance, welfare, section 8, medicare, free schooling (with free meals) etc.
If 70% of food stamp recipients are white, then 30% are black. That would be about 13 million people, which is about a third of the black population.
I wonder what he would say about Lakewood, let alone Kiryas Yoel.
Seems to me there is another group heavy on government entitlement benefits…….
Mr. Gingrich is pushing all the right buttons to attract votes of the white folks who believe that African-Americans prefer subsidies to jobs and business. That’s about as negative as anything I have heard from any other candidate.
Given Mr. Gingrich’s failure as a campaign fundraiser, and his resulting inability to run advertisements, he has to put all his negative comments into press releases and news conferences in the hope that his malicious statements will be repeated for free by broadcast and cable news networks.
“Rick Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania who said Sunday that he did not want to “make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money […] Santorum’s comments were criticized […] Ben Jealous also criticized Santorum’s remarks.”
This is an outright lie. Santorum never said any such thing. CNBC made it up. מדבר שקר תרחק
Following up on #s 2 and 3, I wonder what the reaction of my holy bretheren would be if the exact same statement were said about Chareidim who refuse to work.
This fits a larger pattern of dysfunction in our community is mind bending…every week we get solocitations, complete with all matter of hoskamas, to help this family or that family pay for their medical bills…and then mouth off against the health care reform legislation that would require insurance for all, or almost all…Our Kollel children sign up for all sorts of State provided benefits designed for low-income families…and at a Shabbos tisch these same “kids” scowl at “Obamacare,” call it socialized medicine. And they cheer Gingrich’s statement, presumeably because of who it is aimed at, and don’t see the irony at all.
To #7 – I dont know about your kids…But, from my own experience I can tell you one thing. Up to a certain amount of hours it pays to work. Considering the high tuition (i have a few kids k”h), insurance costs food costa, rent, it doesn’t make sense for me to work for more than x hours per week. The extra hours that i’ll be putting in will just go towards paying those expenses. Now, if you’re making a lot of money…that’s a different story. On the other hand, if all these programs were cut – which I wish they were – THEN.. prices would go down, rent would go down, people would have an inentive to actually work hard if they knew there was no way out.
flyer: good thing you know so much about the black community. Fortunately, there is no racism nor the lingering effects of racist policies to adversely affect blacks in the US. There is equal opportunity and the only reason for disproportionate poverty in the black community is that welfare benefits are so attractive.
Since you argued so persuasively and don’t know why anyone would want to work, are you going to try it? It ain’t pleasant.
Are there lazy, shiftless blacks? Of course. But there are lazy,shiftless whites, Hispanics, Jews, etc.
Are there problems in the black community? Of course. But just as there are problems in the Jewish community, it is not as simple as “that’s just the way they are.”
Yonason W,
Actually the petitions for help with paying for medical care comes from those who live in Isreal which has socilized medicine of the type that Obama and other liberals would like to have implemented in America.
As someone who personally had a very rare disease and spent several weeks in the hospitol at the same time as a reletive in Isreal was suffering from a deadly disease i personally can inform you that while my medical bills (which totaled well over one million dolars) were covered completley by insurance my reletive’s bills were not covered by Kupat Cholim rather once recovery was not viewed as likely my reletive was told they would not pay.
Thank G-d family members had the resources to cover continued treatment and this reletive recovered and a several young children were not rendered orphans.
Personally it was made quite clear to me that if socialized medicine had already been implemented in America then there was no way I would have recieved the treatment that I got and the end would ch”v have been much different.
But B”H we have been spared the failure that socialized medicine has been all over the world.