Rick Santorum told Iowa Republicans today that he wants to eliminate welfare entirely, and, in a racially-charged statement, Santorum said he specifically didn’t want to help black people by “giving them other people’s money.”
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According to government statistics, 35% of adults on welfare (TANF) are white, 34% are black, and 24% are Hispanic.
So, does Santorum only want to help whites, or is he just rolling around in stereotypical assumptions — albeit false ones — about welfare recipients? Santorum then went on to extol the “trickle-down” virtues of Reaganomics, which have been proven to be false.
Stephen Webster at The Raw Story notes:
Speaking to Republicans in Iowa on Monday, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) said his administration would reform welfare to the point that it would offer no welfare at all.
After suggesting that an expansion of Medicare is really just a plot to make voters more “dependent†on Washington, Santorum added: â€I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them other people’s money.â€
“I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn their money and provide for themselves and their families,†he added. “The best way to do that is to get the manufacturing sector of the economy rolling.â€
…
According to the University of Michigan’s National Poverty Center, 27.4 percent of blacks and 26.6 percent of Hispanics were living in poverty in 2010, compared to 9.9 percent of whites. Unemployment statistics between the racial demographics are similarly skewed.
Despite the factually flawed nature of Santorum’s pitch on Monday, the underlying logic of his pitch is abundantly clear: census data shows that over 91 percent of Iowans are white, a community Santorum must desperately appeal to if he wants a win in Tuesday’s caucuses.
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