Legislator Who Wants to Rename Welfare Sponsored Bill to Eliminate Southern Border, Honor Michael Jackson

The Texas congresswoman who sponsored measures to eliminate the southern border and honor a child-molesting singer killed by a drug overdose wants to rename government welfare “transitional living fund.”

That’s because welfare is an important safety net not a handout, according to Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, one of President Obama’s biggest allies in the costly war on poverty. Welfare should be available to everyone, the Democratic lawmaker said during a recent speech on the House floor, and should be rebranded “transitional living fund” because that’s what it is, “for people to be able to live.”

This keeps with the Obama mentality of eliminating the stigma long associated with government handouts so as to make it an ordinary part of life. This is why the administration changed the name of food stamps to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a taxpayer-funded handout that has grown immensely under Obama. In fact, a record 47 million people get food stamps at an astounding cost of $80.4 billion in fiscal year 2012, the latest available figure.

Lee made her welfare rebranding argument as she called upon Congress to extend government unemployment benefits, known as Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC). “Behind these grim statistics are the heart breaking stories of real persons struggling to get by, many of whom I have met during the current work period,” Lee said, adding that failure to extend federal unemployment insurance would also “hurt job growth locally and throughout the nation, costing the economy 240,000 jobs.” She failed to explain how exactly this would happen, however.

This is the same veteran legislator who sponsored a bill to legalize illegal aliens and who has voted against crucial ant-terrorism measures. A few years ago at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing Lee compared Islamic radicals to Christians that oppose abortion. The hearing was held to address the threat of Muslim-American radicalization in U.S. prisons and, as an example, Lee contended that Christians who have bombed abortion clinics pose a threat comparable to the one created by Islamic extremists.

When pop star Michael Jackson—for years dogged by accusations of child molestation—died of a drug overdose, Lee introduced a measure to honor him as a global humanitarian and noted leader in the fight against worldwide hunger. In her proposal (Honoring an American Legend and Musical Icon) to Congress, Lee requested that the eccentric pop star be recognized as an “accomplished contributor to the worlds of arts and entertainment, scientific advances in the treatment of HIV/AIDS and global food security.”

Lee’s proposal also mentions how Jackson met terminally ill children backstage and graciously invited a teenage boy suffering from cystic fibroses to his home. No mention of the accusations or trial for child molestation, however. In the early 1990s a boy accused Jackson of molesting him and the singer paid the family $20 million so they refused to cooperate in a criminal investigation. A few years ago, the singer was tried—and acquitted—for sexually molesting another boy who said Jackson gave him alcohol. There were numerous other allegations of inappropriate behavior between the singer and the many children that regularly surrounded him.

The congresswoman has also voted against several anti-terrorism laws, including a crucial one requiring states to verify the authenticity of every driver’s license and another allowing the government to use electronic surveillance to investigate suspected terrorist operatives. Not surprisingly, Lee also voted against separate welfare reform bills designed to move people off the welfare rolls and into paying jobs.