The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, and others take note of a line in Walmart’s annual report highlighting the retailer’s dependence on food-stamp beneficiaries for profits:
Our business operations are subject to numerous risks, factors and uncertainties, domestically and internationally, which are outside our control … These factors include … changes in the amount of payments made under the Supplement [sic] Nutrition Assistance Plan and other public assistance plans, changes in the eligibility requirements of public assistance plans, …
Walmart has previously warned that cuts to food stamps would hurt its bottom line.
Of course, Rep. Tom Cotton believes we haven’t cut food stamps nearly enough. Walmart? Why that’s where “we’ve all been in that situation,” says Cotton, standing in line when a sneaky food-stamp recipient “has steak in their basket and they have a brand new iPhone and they’re going out to a brand new SUV.”
Meanwhile, Gallup is out with a new poll which asked residents of each state whether they sometimes struggle to afford food. Mississippi had the highest rate at 25 percent, while Arkansas was fifth, with 22.5 percent of the state’s residents reporting at least one time in the last 12 months when they could not afford to buy the food they or their families needed. Will that number increase in the wake of food-stamp cuts? Let them eat iPhones, says Cotton.
Here’s a map from the Gallup survey: