Fox Business host Charles Payne: “Food stamps and welfare” are “deliberately designed ... to keep people on these programs”
Fox anchor Harris Faulkner: “That helps to control a segment of the population”
Published
Citation
From the May 13, 2026, edition of Fox News' Outnumbered
CHARLES PAYNE (FOX BUSINESS HOST): Call me cynical, alright. Here's my thing. I grew up in the Army bases, and my parents divorced, so I came up to Harlem in the 1970s, early '70s — the most violent, poorest, dangerous neighborhood in America. And the first time I saw people, you know, on food stamps and welfare and, you know, what they call, you know, benefits, right? And after a while of hearing people, like all the different little loopholes of being able to get extra, and do this, and get that, I came to the conclusion it's deliberately designed this way. Because as long as you have people getting welfare, getting food stamps, you know, relying on the government — and even if there's little loopholes for them to get extra — they're gonna be less likely to try to get off of that, and get on to the income, the ladder of real success. That's a way of keeping power over them. I hate to say it, but a lot of these loopholes, like these EB — this scam? We've seen this scam a million times. They can't fix this? They can't fix all these loopholes and scams? I think they deliberately put them in place to keep people on these programs.
HARRIS FAULKNER (CO-HOST): Yeah. And that helps to control a segment of the population.
PAYNE: Absolutely. You've got their control, that means you keep their vote, you keep them where they are. You know, it's just — this is the way, the conclusion I came to a long time ago.
FAULKNER: And they scare them by saying if we're not office, well that will be taken away.
PAYNE: Someone's going to take this from you.
FAULKNER: Yep. My mom used to say, if you allow someone to always feed you, they can and will often starve you. Yeah. That's the threat.