During a recent podcast appearance Republican representative Matt Gaetz, decided to dust
off that classic reaganism where he called food stamp recipients couch potatoes.
Here is Matt Gaetz explaining his disdain for people receiving SNAP benefits.
Here he is.
I am a big believer in work requirements.
Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich in divided government negotiated welfare to work.
And I don't think it's unreasonable to say that able-bodied people who are working age,
who are not disabled, who are not seniors, should have to go to work if they want someone
else to pay for their healthcare or their, uh, benefits in, uh, other forms, right?
Like feed stamps.
And if we did that, there's real savings on the front end and then you actually get economic
growth on the back end.
When you get people off the couch, then you're able to help with some of the labor problems
that we have at so many of our small businesses.
You're able to get more business confidence, consumer confidence, investment confidence,
and we would get back to the productive features of our economy that were roaring during the
Trump presidency.
And if Joe Biden won't do that, then what he's defending are the, the couch potatoes
over hardworking Americans.
And that's a pretty bad strategy going into 2023 and 2024, when
Ronald Reagan burst onto the scene in the 19, uh, well, I guess technically late 1970s
running for president in 1980, he used that imagery, the lazy welfare queen, living high
on the hog, going out and having lobster dinners while you're toiling away at work.
But she and her family are living off the government's tit.
She is the reason your life sucks.
You are slaving away and they're getting all those benefits and they're just living the
good life and you're the sucker while they take advantage of the system.
That's what Reagan did, and that is exactly what little Matt Gates is trying to do right
there.
Matt Gae, who by the way, is a very clear example of a nepotism baby got everything
in his life handed to him by his well-connected and, you know, politically relevant father,
including his current seat in Congress.
This guy has been groomed to be this thing that he is for his entire life by his well-to-do
family.
You know, how much the average across the country, the average snap benefit is per month
here in the United States, $216, $216.
And Matt Gaetz in that podcast to say, and the reason we got a worker shortage is because
these people are getting so much government money that they just sit around on the couches
all day.
We gotta get 'em off the couch, as he said, for $216 a month.
You show me anywhere in this country where you can live off of $216 per month and live
a good comfortable life.
And I will pack my family up and we'll be headed there tomorrow because such a utopia
doesn't actually exist except in the brains of idiot.
Well-to-do well-off Republican politicians who want you to blame those people receiving
food stamp benefits for the problems in your life.
When in reality it's those same politicians you keep sending to Washington.
Those are the ones who screw you over.
Those are the ones taken away your sick days.
Those are the ones killing your unions.
Those are the ones poisoning you with all of this environmental pollution.
Then of course, refusing to give you sick days for it.
The problems in your life are because of the people that you continue to vote for.
So maybe it's time to switch that up.
But we have seen relentless attacks on the working class coming from the right, whether
it's Marjorie Taylor Green, winding about her petty little $174,000 salary, whether
it's the people at Fox News whining about workers having sick days or Matt Gates saying
that people getting snap benefits are couch potatoes.
And all of that has happened within the last four days.
Folks, when Republicans show you who they are, believe them, they are attacking the
working class.
They are attacking you and they're looking down their noses at you.
And every one of them is a multimillionaire that doesn't give a.
If you have benefits at work, they don't give a if you can put food on the table.
They don't care about you.
They just want you to keep voting for 'em by telling you who's to blame.
For all your problems.