Bauer, a two-term Republican who is running for governor, said there are parents who are dependent upon the government for food and shelter, but who are unwilling to engage in their children's education. This, he said, robs children of a chance to break out of poverty. 
 
 But Bauer, in an interview with The State Saturday, said a furor over his comments doesn't change this fact: South Carolina needs to have an honest conversation about the cycle of government dependency among its poorest residents. 
 
 Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer said Saturday he could have chosen his words more carefully when he compared people who take public assistance to stray animals Friday. 
 
 And as a candidate for governor, Bauer said, now is the time to start talking about something that others are unwilling to tackle. Bauer said he wants to lead that conversation. 
 
 "Why shouldn't you have to do something?" Bauer asked of people receiving food stamps, free school lunches and public housing. "In government, we are too often giving a handout instead of a hand up." 
 
 Friday, Bauer said giving food to needy people means encouraging dependence. It also gives the recipients a license to have children who will also be dependent on public aid, he said. 
 
 "My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals," Bauer told a Greenville-area crowd. "You know why? Because they breed. 
 
 "You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better." 
 
 Those comments caused Democratic candidates running for governor and some lawmakers to question Bauer's faith, compassion and timing. 
 
 The state is enduring the nation's worst-ever recession. Bauer's comments came on the same day South Carolina reported its jobless rate is now 12.6 percent. State agencies are reporting more South Carolinians are tapping public assistance, as job creation is scant and job loss has remained robust. 
 
 "It amazes me how some Republican politicians claim a monopoly on Christianity and then go out and say and do some of the most un-Christian things imaginable," said Charleston attorney Mullins McLeod, who participated in a candidates forum in Columbia along with Bauer Saturday. "... Bauer's comments are despicable and the total opposite of the Christian values Bauer espouses." 
 
 Sen. Vincent Sheheen, D-Kershaw, said if there is anyone not taking responsibility, it's Bauer and his fellow Republicans. Sheheen, who is running for governor, noted the GOP has been in control while economic conditions in South Carolina have deteriorated and left more than 600,000 citizens jobless. 
 
 "The increase of people in our state who need jobs, food and shelter is a direct result of the failed policies of those who've controlled our state government for the past eight years," said Sheheen. "I am disgusted by these comments. They show an unbelievable lack of compassion toward the unemployed workers in our state who are hurting during these hard times." 
 
 Sen. Larry Martin, R-Pickens, said it's ironic that Bauer's comments appeared in The Greenville News next to an article about the state's jobless rate setting a new record. 
 
 In that article, Martin said, there was a jobless worker who talked about the indignity of a willing and able worker having to ask for food stamps. "People are hurting," Martin said. 
 
 State Education Superintendent Jim Rex, a Democrat who is also running for governor, said Bauer should apologize. 
 
 "If the intent of Lieutenant Governor Bauer's remarks was to blame children, who are not responsible for their own predicaments, or to blame adults, who want to work but cannot find jobs, it is regrettable," Rex said. "It is reprehensible that a statewide elected official would compare his fellow citizens to stray animals. He should apologize." 
 
 Bauer said he doesn't need to apologize. His comments, Bauer said, are not about hardships associated with the economy, but a culture of dependence that is there during good economic times. 
 
 He also said he wasn't advocating the abolition of the federal school-lunch program or any other government aid. Bauer said he wants the state to rethink how those programs are administered. 
 
 "This is out of love and compassion," Bauer said. "If I have to take a hit, then fine. ... I will take short-term pain for long-term gain." 
 
 Bauer, 40, said the criticism of him is political opportunism. He said there is probably no one in South Carolina politics who identifies more with the plight of the poorest South Carolinians or who spends more time helping the needy. 
 
 Bauer said he's been poor, unlike most S.C. politicians. Bauer is a child of divorce. As a result, he and his sister qualified for reduced-price lunches in the Irmo school system, something that was obvious to other kids because of the different color lunch ticket he was given. 
 
 Bauer said he was "mortified" by the idea of presenting the reduced-price lunch ticket. "Everyone knew," he said. 
 
 That's part of the reason, Bauer said, that he has raised enough money to give away nearly 10,000 pairs of shoes last year and 6,000 blankets. 
 
 Bauer on Saturday had returned from a charity drive to aid victims of the Haiti earthquake. He says his efforts will send three truckloads of supplies to victims there. 
 
 "I haven't done any of this for publicity," Bauer said. "I don't know if the folks who are criticizing me have put in the work I have in helping people. 
 
 "I have spent many USC football Saturdays outside the stadium hustling (for donations). It all goes to my foundation. Where is the media coverage of that?" 
 
 Bauer said there is also little media coverage of the frustrated public school system that wants parents across the spectrum to get more involved with their children's education. 
 
 Bauer says he frequently hears from teachers. There was a time when he was one. Bauer worked as a substitute teacher for four years while he was also in the state Senate. He says he did so because he wanted to know firsthand about what works in schools and what doesn't work. 
 
 The experience, Bauer said, raised as many questions as it provided answers. That's why, he said, the state needs to have what he says is a necessary but potentially painful discussion. If nobody else is willing to talk about it, then he is, Bauer said. 
 
 "I'm looking for ideas," Bauer said. 

 “My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed! You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.” 
 
 – Andre Bauer, lieutenant governor of South Carolina 
 
 and candidate for S.C. governor. 
 
 It’s hard to know where to start with a statement like that. Apparently, Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer believes that we should try to starve the poor out of existence. Deprive them of food and they will cease breeding: Problem solved, neat as that. (An audio version of Bauer’s remarks with additional context is available here. Hearing the vehemence with which Bauer makes the above statement only compounds its ugliness.) 
 
 For the moment, though, let’s set aside the pure viciousness of that statement and address what Bauer claims is his larger point. In effect, his thesis is that government assistance actually causes poverty because it subsidizes and encourages irresponsible actions. “In government, we continue to reward bad behavior,” he said. “Any time we give somebody money we’re rewarding them. We’re telling them to keep doing what they’re doing.” 
 
 Cut off those subsidies, in other words, and poverty will decrease. 
 
 In some circles, that’s a politically popular explanation for the problems of the underclass. So let’s take it seriously for a moment and try to test that analysis against what we know to be reality. 
 
 The first problem is history. Human poverty has existed in every culture and era, without exception. It is a constant of human existence, a pre-existing condition, so to speak. No matter what Bauer chooses to believe, government did not create it. South Carolina, for example, was mired in deep poverty long before school-lunch programs and welfare programs existed. 
 
 Second, if Bauer were right, we would expect that poverty would be lowest in those nations that do nothing to “subsidize bad behavior,” and highest in those countries where the government support system rewards such behavior. Yet if you look around the world, the opposite is true. Poverty levels are highest in those societies that make little attempt to address it, and lowest in those that offer some form of safety net. 
 
 We can also test Bauer’s thesis here at home, by comparing states that offer varying degrees of support for the poor. A liberal Northeastern state such as Connecticut, for example, offers a more extensive government support system to its poor than does a conservative state such as South Carolina. Mississippi offers even less support to its poor than does South Carolina. Put in Bauer’s terms, Connecticut rewards poverty while South Carolina and Mississippi try to penalize it. 
 
 If Bauer’s thesis is correct — if government support causes poverty — then Connecticut ought to be drowning in poor people while Mississippi has relatively few poor people. Yet in fact the exact opposite is true, and Census Bureau figures prove it. In Connecticut, which “subsidizes bad behavior” most heavily, 5.7 percent of families lived below the poverty line in 2007, while 16 percent did so in Mississippi, where poverty was least subsidized. (The figure in South Carolina was 11.2 percent; in Georgia it was 10.8 percent. And all those numbers are undoubtedly a lot higher in 2010.) 
 
 That data suggest that poverty is a much more complex phenomenon than Bauer would like to pretend, and is not in the least “caused” by government assistance. 
 
 Nor does government assistance encourage “breeding,” as Bauer so cruelly described it. It is demographic fact that in every culture and in every era throughout history, poorer families tend to have more children than affluent families. The presence or absence of government support has nothing to do with it. By the way, Bauer’s dismay is also nothing new; in cultures throughout time, the more affluent have always been dismayed by those “breeders” in the lower classes. 
 
 In his speech, Bauer recounts a second-hand tale of a 10-year-old child who supposedly gave birth to a baby of her own. If true, it is a tragic tale for both. Even if that particular story is false, the larger problem of teenage and out-of-wedlock births is very real and must be confronted honestly. However, that honest discussion must begin by acknowledging that the 10-year-old did not “breed” in response to financial inducements offered by the government. 
 
 Bauer did offer one concrete suggestion in his speech, proposing that parents be required to attend parent-teacher conferences and take drug tests or lose government benefits such as school lunch programs. If they want government benefits, he said, they should be required to act responsibly. 
 
 To any responsible person, that instinctively sounds great, but let’s think it through. The population that Bauer is attempting to target are by definition not responsible. They are parents who abuse drugs or simply don’t care enough about their children to ensure that they get a good education. Is that population going to change its behavior in response to a possible cutoff of free school lunches? Sadly, no. If they responded to that kind of thing, they wouldn’t be in that predicament in the first place. 
 
 And if you nonetheless go ahead and deny a free or subsidized lunch to a kid whose parents are on drugs, what have you accomplished? You condemn the child to hunger and malnutrition, heaping another significant problem on his or her already overburdened shoulders. You reduce the incentive for that child to go to school every day, where at least he or she knew food was available. And you make people like Andre Bauer feel better. 
 
 Bauer’s fundamental mistake is his assertion that the poor respond to market signals sent by the government. The real problem is that they don’t respond to market signals at all. Living in poverty ought to be a huge market signal, but for a variety of reasons, the poor are largely immune to it. Many of them don’t recognize what the signals are saying, they lack the education to know how to respond to them, and they have no faith that the market would reward them anyway. 
 
 Changing that is difficult; only a small percentage of those born into poverty escape it. Perhaps the best we can do is to champion programs — and the school lunch program is a perfect if small example — that increase the odds of escape for individuals mired in poverty. 
 
 One last point: In his speech and subsequent press release, Bauer complained that “political correctness” makes it impossible to discuss such issues publicly. I would suggest that rhetoric likening our fellow Americans to overbreeding stray animals makes it far more difficult to discuss these things rationally than does political correctness.
– Mark Sanford is no longer the most embarrassing politician in South Carolina: His lieutenant governor, Andre Bauer, is in hot water after comparing government assistance for the poor to "feeding stray animals." Said Bauer, who is running to succeed Sanford as governor: "You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that." Reaction to the remarks, first reported in the Greenville News, was quick. Bauer allowed that he could have chosen his words more carefully but declined to back off. "In government, we are too often giving a handout instead of a hand up," he said in an interview with the State. Analyzing "the pure viciousness" of Bauer's position suggests he "believes that we should try to starve the poor out of existence," Jay Bookman writes for the Atlanta-Journal Constitution. "Deprive them of food and they will cease breeding: Problem solved, neat as that."