The LA Times has a nice expose of Ernst's hypocrisy, ignorance and spitefulness:
In another snippet from that Des Moines talk, she related how the Red Oak community came together in 2009, a period of crushing local unemployment, to get the economy moving again. "It took local investors and local ingenuity to start up new industry in town," she said. "It wasn't the federal government that came in and helped our community. It was those local citizens banding together....That's what we needed, was for government to get out of the way."
Is that so?
In 2009, Montgomery County, Iowa, where Red Oak is located, collected nearly $9 million in federal farm aid. The following year it was $12 million, and a year after that it was $9 million. At least a few people in Red Oak had to be mighty pleased that the government didn't "get out of the way." As it happens, Iowa ranks second among the states in total agricultural subsidies, behind only Texas.
Yet Ernst with a straight face maintained that "we have to take a good hard look at entitlement programs, and SNAP [that is, food stamps] is a good example of that....We have to do a better job of educating the American people that they can be self-sufficient."
She should explain that to her neighbors in Montgomery County, where the 2,000 people receiving food stamps account for nearly 20% of the population.
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