Nebraska Attorney General Compares Welfare Recipients to...Ravenous Raccoons

In a recent speech, Nebraska Attorney General and 2012 GOP Senatorial candidate John Bruning drew an interesting analogy. With great fanfare, he compared welfare recipients to...ravenous raccoons.

In a video that was shot by a liberal group called the American Bridge 21st Century, the politician can be seen making the curious connection. In the clip, Bruning tells the audience a story about a local construction project that was stopped in its tracks so that it wouldn't harm endangered species. TPM has more:

...Bruning makes the comparison as part of an elaborate metaphor originally focused on environmental regulations. He describes a requirement that workers at a construction project gather up endangered beetles by luring them into a bucket with a dead rat in order to release them elsewhere. But the plan is thwarted when hungry raccoons then eat them straight out of the rat-infested bucket. Which, according to Bruning, is a perfect image to illustrate how welfare recipients receive their benefits.

Watch Bruning's comments, below:

The Huffington Post provides a transcript:

"So the biologist has to go out there, and he sets these traps. They put a rat carcass in the bottom, and the beetles crawl up and they fall into the bottom of it. And they put all these buckets up and down the side of the road and they capture all the Burying Beetles. The biologist goes out in the morning, grabs the beetles, and they take them two miles down and they gently let the beetles out. So that the beetles will survive.

The raccoons figure out the beetles are in the bucket. And it's like grapes in a jar. The raccoons, they're not stupid, they're going to do the easy way if we make it easy for them -- just like welfare recipients all across America. If we don't send them to work, they're going to take the easy way out."

(h/t The Huffington Post)