Kochs Support Food Stamp Crackdown
Walker champions it, got $13 million from Kochs and WMC, who support policy.
Governor Scott Walker signs the 2015-17 State Budget into law at Valveworks USA in Waukesha. Photo from the State of Wisconsin.
Two of the largest business powerhouses in Wisconsin heaped praise on Gov. Scott Walker for his latest proposal to make it harder for people to get food stamps. The two groups — Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC) and Americans for Prosperity, which was founded by the Koch Brothers — have secretly raised and spent an estimated $24.3 million mostly to help elect Walker and the GOP-controlled legislature over the last seven years.
Walker’s plan released on Monday would require parents of children, ages 6 to 18, on the state’s Food Share program to have a job and work at least 80 hours a month, or receive job training from the state. Walker put similar requirements in place in 2013 for childless adults in the Food Share program.
WMC said in a statement that current welfare programs are a disincentive to work, and that the governor’s plan would create more qualified workers for Wisconsin businesses.
In addition to its millions of dollars in outside spending, WMC boasts 3,500 member businesses who are generous individual and political action committee contributors and hail from more than a dozen special interest groups. Those special interests include business, manufacturing, energy, insurance, health care, transportation, construction, real estate, finance, tourism, agriculture, road builders, natural resources and telecommunications.
Americans for Prosperity, a rightwing ideological group, has spent an estimated $5.7 million since January 2010 to help elect Republicans and conservatives to legislative and statewide offices. The group spent more than half of its total outside election spending, about $3.7 million, to help Walker win his 2012 recall.
Americans for Prosperity praised the governor’s proposal, saying it would help Wisconsin “lead the way with the next generation of welfare reform.”
Matthew Rothschild is executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign
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The Koch Brothers support ending the disastrous failure of cannabis Prohibition in Wisconsin but that hasn’t happened in Wisconsin yet?
I wonder if any of these so called lawmakers knows anyone on food stamps?
Ex food stamper
“WMC said in a statement that current welfare programs are a disincentive to work, and that the governor’s plan would create more qualified workers for Wisconsin businesses.”
Workers who will be paid slave wages of $7.25/hr. Just what the membership of WMC ordered.
The Koch Bros. ALEC program should not be allowed because it is a form of lobbying because of the Corporations who attend and push their agendas to the legislators who attend or participate in discussions with the Corporate attendees. They also provide the way they want the legislation to be written, favoring them. Taxpayers are picking up the tab for those who attend these conferences, primarily Republicans; All who attend should pay their own way as other government employees have to do for education purposes, which is the rational used by the Walker Administration.