Congressman Alan Grayson stirred things up a bit by making some audacious statements that inspired Katie Sanders of PolitiFact to check his sources. Grayson declared to the world, via The Huffington Post, that:
In state after state, the largest group of Medicaid recipients is Walmart employees. I’m sure that the same thing is true of food stamp recipients. Each Walmart ‘associate’ costs the taxpayers an average of more than $1,000 in public assistance.”
He also appeared on a TV show called “The Young Turks” and asserted that Walmart employees are the largest group of food-stamp recipients. These allegations didn’t fall out of a clear blue sky. Apparently, a lot of eyeballs scrutinize the figures, and they don’t like what they see. Sanders says:
Democrats and labor unions have long been critical of the non-union retailer and have recently been emphasizing that its low wages end up costing government because workers seek food stamps and other aid… Newspapers, lawmakers and liberal policy groups for years have analyzed which companies have large numbers of employees that seek public health insurance assistance.
Doesn’t everybody love Wal-Mart? Well, no. (Sanders explains that Wal-Mart is the corporation and Walmart is a store, but they seem to be used interchangeably.) Anyway, for being the biggest private employer in the country, the corporation pays relatively low wages.
Apparently, there is only data from less than half the states (24), and not all of those states keep track of the Medicaid numbers. But the Good Jobs First organization did look at state-run programs for people in nowhere-land, who neither earn enough to buy insurance, nor earn little enough to qualify for Medicaid.
Sanders takes the reader through examples of what goes on in the various states, with help from Phil Mattera of Good Jobs First. The trouble is, most of the information is eight years old. Apparently, more recent numbers are not available. But even if by some miracle all these numbers have been halved since then, it’s still too much.
Of all the companies in Florida, Wal-Mart has the most employees and their dependents eligible for Medicaid. Pennsylvania is in dire straits. Wal-Mart has 48,000 workers there, and one out of every six is signed up with Medicaid. The state (the taxpayer) kicks in around $15 million per year.
In Missouri, the corporation is the second biggest employer, and has the most people enrolled in the state’s Medicaid plan. Ironically, Missouri’s biggest employer is the state government, many of whose employees are occupied with counting the social costs incurred by the low wages paid by the second-largest employer.
On the question of food stamps, there are more recent statistics but fewer of them. It is known, for instance, that other Florida taxpayers subsidize $2.6 million per year worth of food assistance needed by Wal-Mart’s workforce. But going by what they had, PolitiFact rated Grayson’s claim “Mostly true.”
Trina Clemente is the author of a petition found at Change.org, which commits its signers to boycotting Walmart. She mentions that six members of the Walton family, who of course make their money from the corporation, have more of it than the combined wealth of the lowest 30% of American workers. The taxpayers are chipping in, paying for the employees’ food stamps and medical needs, so that a few Waltons can be richer than any human needs to be. Clemente writes:
Walmart workers are some of our country’s most vulnerable workers. Many of them are literally just a paycheck or two away from homelessness. Most already qualify for food assistance and Medicaid. With over 2 million employees and a large percentage of them having to rely on public assistance despite working, Walmart has managed to become the recipient of a huge transfer of public wealth (tax dollars) into private hands.
How many of the company’s employees actually are homeless is anybody’s guess. Chances are, they do their best to hide it. Richard R. Troxell of House the Homeless, and National Chairman of the Universal Living Wage Campaign, makes this suggestion:
How about we make a deal with business? They can can pay for the homeless workers and we as taxpayers just pay for the disabled homeless. Now that seems fair.
Reactions?
Source: “Walmart: Listen to your workers and your customers,” Change.org, 2012
Source: “Alan Grayson says more Walmart employees on Medicaid, food stamps than other companies,” PolitiFact, 12/06/12
Image by Patrick Hoesly.