Rep. Steve King (R-IA) proposed a source of funding for the U.S.-Mexico border wall on CNN’s New Day Wednesday, the over half a billion in federal funding that Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, receives annually.
“It’s 1.6 billion dollars,” CNN’s Alisyn Camerota told King, asking, “are you comfortable, congressman, with providing $1.6 billion of taxpayer money — not from Mexico — to build that wall?”
“Absolutely yes, and more,” King replied, "And I would find half of a billion dollars of that right out of Planned Parenthood's budget."
Planned Parenthood received $554.6 million in taxpayer dollars last year, had a slight decrease in the amount of contraceptive services provided and stopped the beating hearts of 328,348 unborn babies, according to their latest annual report.
King had another area of funding he thought would come in handy for the border wall.
"The rest of it could come out of food stamps and the entitlements that are being spread out for people that haven't worked in three generations," he suggested, "we've got to put America back to work, this administration will do it."
“You want to take food from people who are the people who are on the lowest rung of the nation’s safety net and their children in terms of food stamps,” Camerota asked, “you’re happy to take, willing to take money from them to build or to give the 1.6 billion for the border wall?”
“For a couple of reasons,” King explained, “and one of them would be that, you know, we will create the kind of security that would bring about 10 million new jobs in America by enforcing immigration law.”
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“Second thing is I wouldn’t impose anything any more strict on anybody in America than what Michelle Obama did with her school lunch program and so I would just say let’s limit to that anybody that wants to have food stamps up to the school lunch program,” King suggested, “but we have seen this go from 19 million people on now SNAP program up to 47 million people on the SNAP program.”
“And you don’t think all of them need it?” Camerota asked.
“Oh I’m sure all of them didn’t need it,” King replied, “We built a program to solve the problem of malnutrition in America and now we have a problem of obesity and when you match up the EBT card with what the scales say on some of the folks I think it’s worth looking at, Michelle Obama looked at it Republicans should be able to look at it too.”
A 2015 USDA study supports a link between the food stamp program and obesity. The study found that 40 percent of food stamp recipients are obese, compared with just over 30 percent of those who don't participate in the program.
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