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If you need food stamps, you should meet the criteria.

I've been on food stamps and welfare. Anybody help me out? No. No. They gave me hope, and they gave me encouragement, and they gave me a vision. That came from my education.

I grew up on food stamps. I come from a very humble background. And I've had many friends that have been destitute - you know, running into trouble - and places like The Midnight Mission have given them hope and have fed them and gotten them back on the right path.

My mother and I were on welfare and food stamps until I was 18, so I've always had this ethos of, like, 'try and make a little bit of money now because you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.'

I didn't have money to eat when I was 21. When I was short on cash, I would sometimes scam food from fast food places. I'd go into fast food chains and pretend I was from a movie studio, tell them they didn't send us the right order and demand they fix it. I've tried to make that right whenever I could.

I became married at a young age and had two daughters and divorced at 26. I had to go on welfare to make ends meet. I had no way to support myself.

Food stamps are an investment in our future.

I know some of you don't care about food stamps, but I'm telling you if it feeds children, you do care about it.

When I started to pay income tax, I was 50 years old.

My father died when I was nine and a half. We were on relief for two years. They call it welfare now, but it was relief then... I never forgot the generosity of New York.