RECORD: OVER 47 MILLION ON FOOD STAMPS FOR ENTIRE YEAR

Food stamp enrollments have remained over 47 million for an unprecedented 13 consecutive months. 

According to the most recent figures available from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which oversees the food stamp program, in August 2012, 47,102,765 individuals were enrolled in the program, known officially as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Enrollments never fell below 47 million in subsequent months and as of August 2013 stood at 47,665,069, representing nearly one out of every seven people in America. 

Recent years have seen an explosion in food stamp enrollments. Since January 2009, the number of individuals on food stamps has skyrocketed from 31.9 million to 47.6 million. 

Via: Breitbart

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Obama using food-stamp cash to fund Michelle’s ‘Let’s Move’

As you dig into your Butterball with all the trimmings this Thanksgiving, remember that millions of famished schoolkids around America may be forced to forgo classic turkey — and chow down instead on vegan black-bean patties and organic locavore quinoa salad.

On Nov. 1, sizable cuts were gouged into the federal food-stamp program (or, as it’s now called, SNAP, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), which feeds 47.6 million people, or nearly one in six Americans. In the city, 1.9 million folks get the bulk of their Jell-O and Campbell’s Soup from stamps.

But news has spread among the poor, like leafy green vegetables, that it wasn’t heartless Republicans who triggered the cuts.

Rather, some of the food-stamp cash was snatched to pay for Michelle Obama’s pet project, Let’s Move. What?

It’s come to this. Some 76 million meals a year will vanish from this city — poof! — partly because the president diverted money from SNAP to the first lady’s signature program, part of her Let’s Move anti-obesity initiative — the bean-sprout-heavy, $4.5 billion Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act.

The rest of the $5 billion annual food-stamp cuts was taken when 2009 stimulus funds dried up. But with ObamaCare woes stealing the oxygen in Washington, there’s little urgency to replace dandelion greens served on recyclable trays with family-friendly buttered mashed potatoes.

Via: NY Post

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After last month’s shopping frenzy, Louisiana governor looks to strip food stamps from abusers

The Louisiana governor's office said Wednesday night that it would strip food stamp benefits from anyone who took advantage of an EBT card malfunction that in some cases caused an all-out shopping frenzy in some stores across the state, The Advocate reported.

It is unclear how many recipients stand in line to lose benefits for a year, but more than 12,000 received an insufficient funds notice when the EBT card system was corrected on Oct.12, the report said.

"We must protect the program for those who receive and use their benefits appropriately according to the law. We are looking at each case individually, addressing those recipients who are suspected of misrepresenting their eligibility for benefits or defrauding the system," Suzy Sonnier, the secretary of state at the Department of Children and Family Services, said in a statement.

The frenzy at some stores was likened to the busiest shopping day of the year. "It was worse than any Black Friday,” Springhill Police Chief Will Lynd told local station KSLA-TV.

Shelves were picked clean in a mob scene that left employees rattled. Walmart spokeswoman Kayla Whaling told the station the company made a conscious decision to keep ringing up goods rather than to cut people off.

Via: Fox News

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NATION'S POOR AT 49.7M, HIGHER THAN OFFICIAL RATE

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The number of poor people in America is 3 million higher than the official count, encompassing 1 in 6 residents due to out-of-pocket medical costs and work-related expenses, according to a revised census measure released Wednesday.

The new measure is aimed at providing a fuller picture of poverty but does not replace the official government numbers. Put in place two years ago by the Obama administration, it generally is considered more reliable by social scientists because it factors in living expenses as well as the effects of government aid, such as food stamps and tax credits.

Administration officials have declined to say whether the new measure eventually could replace the official poverty formula, which is used to allocate federal dollars to states and localities and to determine eligibility for safety-net programs such as Medicaid.

Congress would have to agree to adopt the new measure, which generally would result in a higher poverty rate from year to year and thus higher government payouts for aid programs.

Via: AP

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Obamacare could increase food stamp rolls

Republicans have another reason to hate Obamacare: It could grow the number of people on food stamps.

The Obama administration has ordered a study to determine whether the Affordable Care Act, by increasing the number of people eligible for Medicaid, will also increase the number of people enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program based on how states enroll people

The outcome of the study could show an increase of 3 percent to 5 percent in food stamp recipients in some states from people who were already eligible for SNAP benefits but had not enrolled in the program — which could translate to millions or even billions more in federal spending, Greg Mills, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute who is conducting the study, told POLITICO.

“So in percentage terms, it’s not going to be very large, but we’re talking about a very large program,” said Mills, who is investigating the effects of the health care law on SNAP on behalf of the Department of Agriculture’s Food Nutrition Service, the agency that monitors food stamps.

(See POLITICO's full Obamacare coverage)

“It would have a substantial financial effect.”

The likely increase would come from a greater overlap in eligibility between Medicaid under Obamacare and SNAP.

Via: Politico

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CNN BLAMES OBAMA FOR FOOD STAMP CUTS

Via

Via: Breitbart

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Food Stamp Cuts could Hurt South Fla. Families

South Florida Democrat Alcee Hastings and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus are decrying a massive cut to food stamps that takes place tonight. House Republicans want even deeper reductions.

According to politicians and nutritional experts, losing $10 a month per person in a low income household in south Florida could have catastrophic impacts. That $10 is being lopped off food assistance locally because Congress is allowing a $5 billion cut to the program nationally. 

Congressman Alcee Hastings says the repercussion's will be lasting.

“All of the evidence points to the health of children being connected with the food that they receive in the early stages of their life”, warned Hastings.

Hastings says the cuts don't make sense in an already wobbly recovery.

"It really pumps money back into the economy and I’ve never understood the resistance to it”, said Hastings.

Meanwhile House Republicans are pushing legislation to cut just under $40 billion from the program over a decade. They say too many people have become dependent on the program.

Via: WGCU

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Deep cuts to country's food stamp program start Friday

WASHINGTON –  Forty-eight million Americans will have their food stamps benefits slashed starting Friday, when a recession-era boost in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program expires.

The move to cut back benefits will be the first wide-scale change to the program affecting nearly every single participant. The 13.6 percent cut comes out to about $36 a month less for a family of four getting government assistance or $420 a year, according to the Department of Agriculture.

Since 2000, the costs for the plan have increased more than 358 percent.

Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, cites lax eligibility requirements as one of the reasons behind the increase.

Enrollment in the food-stamp benefits also rose during the 2007-2011 recession.

Many anti-poverty groups have warned that cutting the program will leave millions of Americans vulnerable.

"People are living at the margins," Ellen Vollinger, legal director and SNAP advocate at the Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger organization, told Reuters. "It's not an abstract metric for people. It's actual dollars to keep food in the refrigerator."

The slash in the program also means less money for discount grocers, dollar stores and gas stations that rely on low-income shoppers.

SNAP is the largest anti-hunger program in the country.

Via: Fox News

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JAY CARNEY: FOOD STAMPS ARE THE ‘MOST EFFECTIVE WAY TO COMBAT HUNGER AND FOOD INSECURITY’

\Anticipating what Democrats have already called the “food stamp cliff” reduction in benefits to take effect on Nov. 1, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Thursday that food stamps are “the most effective way of to combat hunger” and accused House Republicans of wanting to “punish” people who receive them.

He was also clear that the Obama administration wants Americans receiving benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to be able to get off the program the right way by reaching a better economic condition.

The “food stamp cliff” is the expiration of the temporary increase in SNAP funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, better known as the stimulus act. Without an increase, a single adult’s benefits will reportedly be cut by $11 a month to a total of $189.

White House press secretary Jay Carney, wearing a cap of the World Series baseball champion Boston Red Sox, arrives for the daily press briefing a the White House in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013. (AP)

“These cuts come at a time when many hardworking American families are still struggling to make ends meet in the wake of the worst recession in decades and last year the additional resources provided by the SNAP lifted 7 million people out of poverty,” Carney said. “That is why the president acknowledged this need when he proposed an extension of the recovery act adjustment through 2014 or until March 2014 in his 2014 budget request and why the strategy currently under way in the House to reduce SNAP by removing millions of low income families from the program does not make sense.”

Via: The Blaze

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Americans Support Stronger Work Requirements for Food Stamps

Nearly three-quarters of Americans believe that the food stamps program should include stronger work requirements, according to the October Food Demand Survey (FooDS) out of Oklahoma State University.

Other surveys similarly show that Americans support work requirements for welfare.

A 2012 Rasmussen survey revealed that 83 percent of Americans favor “a work requirement for welfare recipients,” with only 7 percent opposing. (The remaining 10 percent were undecided.)

And a 2009 nationally representative survey conducted by The Heritage Foundation found thatmore than 95 percent of Americans agreed that “able-bodied adults that receive cash, food, housing, and medical assistance should be required to work or prepare for work as a condition of receiving those government benefits.” High levels of support were found by those on both sides of the political aisle, with 96 percent of Democrats and 97 percent of Republicans agreeing with this statement.

On top of this, a survey conducted earlier this year by Rasmussen reveals that 80 percent of Americans agree that work is the best way out of poverty.

Yet the reality today is that the vast majority of the government’s 80 means-tested welfare programs—including the large and rapidly growing food stamps program—do not encourage work. Most act as a one-way handout.

The Foundry

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Questions Rarely Asked—and Never Answered

It Can't Happen Here?

What does it take to warn Americans about unchecked pension growth, socialized medicine, vast increases in entitlements, higher taxes, and steady expansion of government? In other words, what is it about Detroit, Italy, or Greece that we do not understand?

In the last five years, the Obama administration has raised taxes on the top income rates, implemented Obamacare, added millions to the disability and food stamp roles, grown the size of the federal work force, run up the national debt, and vastly expanded the money supply, along with insuring near zero interest rates. Are there any historical examples where these redistributive efforts have brought long-term tranquility and prosperity?

To put it another way, does anyone ask basic questions about human nature anymore? If one gives more incentives to obtain government support while unemployed, why would not fewer people be working? If the food stamp, unemployment, and disability rolls are markedly up, and if it is almost impossible to verify that recipients are also not working for unreported cash wages (we hear mostly of government efforts to add more to these programs, rather than to audit those already on them), why would one seek a “regular” job that would lose such subsidies and make all one’s income reportable? (We know two basic truths about the IRS in the age of Obama: first, it goes after political opponents in partisan fashion, and second, it gives away billions of dollars in federal income tax rebate credits to those who did not deserve them.)

If you allow illegal immigrants to enjoy full government subsidies, driver’s licenses, in-state tuition discounts, sanctuary cities, participation on juries, and all without fear of deportation, then why (a) would people not flock here illegally from Mexico, and (b) why after arriving would they go through the hassle of seeking citizenship when residency provides almost all the same benefits?

Via: PJ Media

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Farm Bills Would Cost More Than Obama Stimulus

The House and Senate are considering farm bill legislation this week whose costs should raise red flags for all Americans. In fact, the House and Senate versions of the bill would cost far more than the Obama stimulus package.

The costs are just one example of how the farm bill ignores taxpayers, consumers, and virtually all Americans.

First of all, the “farm bill” is a misleading title. It’s more appropriately called the food stamp bill, since nearly 80 percent of the costs are connected to food stamps. By combining agriculture programs with food stamps, legislators have turned the food stamp bill into a political game where, every five years, Congress rubberstamps legislation that helps special interests at the expense of most Americans.

Via: The Foundry

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MORE NEEDING FOOD STAMPS MAY BE NEW NORMAL

BOSTON, Oct. 27 (UPI) -- 
Enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program has more than doubled in the past decade even during times of economic growth, U.S. researchers say.
SNAP enrollment in the last 10 years more than doubled to 47 million but, for the first time, the number of Americans receiving food stamps increased even when the economy was growing.

During the 2003-07 expansion, the SNAP case load, -- in a break with historic trends -- rose 24 percent, the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College reported. CRC economists Matt Rutledge and April Yanyuan Wu said one reason is a change in the longstanding correlation between poverty and the unemployment rate.

Poverty used to fall in tandem with the jobless rate, reducing the need for food stamps but the researchers found poverty did not decline as the economy grew in the mid-2000s -- and in the recovery following the Great Recession, the number of people receiving food stamps kept rising.

Via: Breitbart
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Newspaper presses FOIA fight for food stamp payment data

South Dakota's Argus Leader newspaper urged a federal appeals court Wednesday to reverse a ruling blocking the newspaper from receiving data on how much the federal government pays to stores that redeeem food stamp benefits.

Jon Arneson, an attorney for the newspaper, told a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit that a lower court judge misinterpreted the law by ruling that a confidentiality provision for retailer applications allowed the U.S. Department of Agriculture to withhold all data on payments to those retailers. Under the Freedom of Information Act, the newspaper requested the data on annual payments to each retailer approved to take part in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

"The Argus is not asking for the invoices. They’re asking for the payment information. All we’re really doing is asking: how does the government spend its money in this instance?" Arneson told the three-judge panel sitting in St. Paul, Minn. "Because of the way FOIA is intended to be applied, we’re entitled to the benefit of the doubt. If there’s doubt here, the Argus is entitled to that benefit."

(Also on POLITICO: Palestinian leader's son appeals loss of Foreign Policy libel lawsuit)

However, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephanie Bengford said the confidentiality provision applies because the cumulative amount of payments to each retailer is based on the series of purchase transactions the stores submit to USDA.

"But for the fact of gathering that information as to each transaction, USDA would not have the total amount of what it paid to the retailers," she told the judges. She also said that a provision in the law protecting information like "income and sales tax filing documents" authorized USDA to withhold data on its own payments to retailers, because they became part of the stores' income.

Via: Politico

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Food stamp benefits going down before the holidays

Millions of American families could face a sparse holiday table when food stamps benefits get reduced in November, and that could be just the start of deeper cuts to the program to feed poor families.

The modern-day food stamp plan, now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, is scheduled to scale back benefits for all recipients on Nov. 1 because a recession-era boost in benefits is expiring.

The cut comes as lawmakers also are considering billions of dollars of reductions to the overall SNAP program, which has grown substantially in recent years amid the weak economy and high unemployment.

The program is now serving more than 23 million households, or nearly 48 million people, according to the most recent government data through June. The USDA says the average monthly benefit is about $275 per household.

The exact reduction depends on the recipients’ situation, but a family of four with no other changes in circumstances will receive $36 less per month, according to the USDA. At today's average prices, that translates to four fewer whole chickens each month.

Stacy Dean, vice president for food assistance policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said that can be a major hit for a family that is already struggling with such low wages that they can’t afford food on their own.

Via: NBC News

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