After the President’s State of the Union Address, the Republicans issued a response. Senator Jodi Ernst’s (R – Iowa) contribution to that response included a claim that her family was so poor that she had to wear bread bags over her shoes in wet weather.
She also claimed that many of her schoolmates were similarly poor. Ernst was born on July 1, 1970, which means she is a bit too young to pull off pseudo-Depression era stories. Reagan had been President around the time that she had allegedly needed to protect her only pair of shoes with bread bags. Reagan’s “trickle down” economics began when she was a tween.
Ernst also claimed that her poor family lived within their means. The District Sentinel, however, reported that Ernst’s family received over $460,000 in farm subsidies between 1995 and 2009 with most of the money being corn subsidies. On top of that, the Montgomery County government awarded her father’s construction company $215,665 in government contracts.
Granted, Ernst was an adult by this time, but her family could surely afford galoshes. Despite the fact that her own family benefitted handsomely from corn subsidies, Jodi Ernst opposes subsidies. During her campaign, she vowed to “cut pork.” That includes federal student loans — like the ones she had used to pay for college.
Ernst’s definition of “pork” probably differs from that of a lot of people, who don’t consider education a frivolous waste of money. It’s also safe to call her a hypocrite, as she and her family have used government funds that she now wants to deny to others.