672,000 new EBT cards handed out like candy in Massachusetts

How great is Bidenomics working out for the people of Massachusetts?

Our citizens are doing so well economically here that the number of active EBT cards – food stamps – has increased from 1,944,399 in July 2023 to 2,616,882 on Sept. 1 of this year.

Nothing says the economy is great like a 34.6% increase in the number of food-stamp recipients in Massachusetts – in a mere 14 months.

Isn’t this wonderful news? Happy days are here again. Just ask Kamala Harris.

Way back in 1932, then-presidential candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “I see one third of a nation ill-clothed, ill-housed and ill-fed.”

Now, almost a century later, of a Massachusetts population of 6.982 million, 2.617 million are on food stamps.

That means 37.5% of the state is “ill-fed” – more than the one-third FDR talked about at the bottom of the Great Depression.

How is this possible? How can it possibly be that another 672,000 people have gone on the dole in Massachusetts in just 14 months?

I’m not expecting any real answers from the administration of Gov. Maura Healey. If Trump were president, you know what the answer would be. But it’s hard to blame Trump for this explosion in poverty after what the Democrats have been telling us has been a golden age of peace and prosperity over the last four years.

These are the Healey administration’s own numbers, by the way. This is not the “misinformation” the Democrats are always talking about, blaming MAGA. As with the FEMA numbers on resettling “migrants” instead of providing disaster relief, these EBT numbers come from the Democrats themselves.

Kelly Dooner is a Taunton city councilor running for the open state Senate seat down there. A Republican, she’s filed more than 30 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for information about, among other things, the cost to the taxpayers of shutting down the only hotel in Taunton and turning it into a flophouse for welfare-collecting illegal aliens.

Until now, Dooner’s best catch was getting the state to admit they’ve spent about $8 million on “transportation” for the freeloaders at the hotel in Taunton.

Now, that $8 million wasted on free Ubers and Lyfts looks like the good old days.

Last month, Dooner asked the Department of Transitional Assistance – welfare – for some information about EBT cards. Basically, she was looking for locations of where the cards are used, including outside the US.

They sent her a spread sheet matching transactions with zip codes and said there were no records of anything outside the US “as EBT cards cannot be used outside of the United States.”

Yeah, sure, whatever you guys say….

But the mind-blowing statistic from DTA was their admission that the number of new EBT cards issued over the past 14 months is almost 700,000.

How is that even remotely possible? Almost 10% of the state’s population has gotten an EBT card in the last year?

At first you may think it must be all the illegal aliens migrating here to begin their lifetime vacations on the public dole. In addition to the free hotel rooms and so much more free stuff, they get three squares a day, on your dime and mine — $64 a day, maybe more by now.

Needless to say, these foreign freeloaders are now complaining about the free eats in, where else, the Globe.

But there aren’t anywhere near 700,000 illegal aliens who’ve flopped into the Commonwealth in the last 14 months. Thank God for small favors.

I called up Kelly Dooner yesterday and asked her if she had any theories about this explosion of handouts.

“Obviously, the migrants play a role but there must be a lack of oversight, no fiscal responsibility whatsoever, for the numbers to increase like this. Are we giving out multiple cards to anyone who wants them?”

Dooner mentioned that whatever the average EBT card pays out every month if you have 672,000 in just over a year, you’re talking about huge amounts of public funds.

“I don’t know, maybe at least $300 million,” she said. “No wonder the state is running a deficit.”

While campaigning door to door in Wareham last week, Dooner said she ran into a single mother of two with a full-time job.

“She told me she makes too much money to get an EBT card,” Dooner said. “She’s working hard to do the right thing, and she can’t get any help. But at the same time, they’ve added almost 700,000 cards to the roles.”

I remember when Gov. Deval Patrick was trying to round up votes for the fake Indian in her first Senate race in 2012. He sent out voter-registration applications to every freeloader in Massachusetts who was living large on food stamps.

As I recall, 10% of the letters to the welfare list came back as “undeliverable,” meaning the cards were most likely going out to non-existent people. No one was shocked that there was 10% fraud in the program.

Now, that 10% fraud number is like the $8 million for chauffeured rides for illegals in Taunton. It seems like the good old days.

How do the Democrats explain this? Gov. Maura Healey is on the campaign trail as a surrogate for Kamala Harris. Like all of them, she says the economy is doing fantastically well.

So why is almost 40% of the population of Massachusetts suddenly on EBT cards, meaning they are “ill-fed?”

What’s going on?

I expect the same answer to my question that Kelly Dooner gets to most of her FOIA requests to the administration. That is to say, no response.

When the phone don’t ring about the 672,000 new EBT cards, you’ll know it’s the Democrats at the State House.

Late yesterday, DTA issued an explanation, of sorts, saying that the 2.6 million “active” EBT cards is “not indicative” of the real number of people on welfare. So why are the cards listed as “active?”

The listed active count, DTA said, includes individuals “no longer eligible,” and those who have been turned down for benefits.

“The DTA currently has about 1 million clients,” the flack said.

One million clients, and 2.6 million “active” cards. Don’t you feel better now?