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Serious Russia Today Journalist Abby Martin's First Tweet: a 9/11 Truther Video

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Sir John Barron3/21/2014 7:25:09 am PDT

So, the teabag GOP in the House tried to reduce Food Stamp $$ by doing this?

So negotiators on the farm bill agreed that states would have to pay a minimum of $20 a year in fuel aid to prompt the benefits. Republicans thought this would save more than $8 billion over a decade, because they assumed the states wouldn’t want to pay $20. Democrats went along because it was better than the original Republican plan to cut $40 billion from food stamps.

But to the shock of Republicans, at least eight states decided to do the right thing and raise their heating-aid payments to $20. New York and Connecticut were first, followed by Rhode Island, Oregon, Massachusetts, Vermont and Montana. Even Gov. Tom Corbett, Republican of Pennsylvania, agreed to go along.

This provoked an outburst from the House speaker, John Boehner. “Since the passage of the farm bill, states have found ways to cheat once again on signing up people for food stamps,” he said last week. “And so I would hope that the House would act to try to stop this cheating and this fraud from continuing.”

Cheating? The states are doing exactly what the farm bill — which Mr. Boehner supported — encouraged them to do: pay more to some of the poorest families in America so they neither freeze nor starve during a brutal winter. Mr. Boehner seems unaware of it, but millions of families have never recovered from the recession, and his chamber has not only refused to help them by stimulating the economy but is trying to push them through the safety net.

Seriously? And now they’re mad that states just increased the heating fuel allowance?

You can’t make this stuff up.