Happy Food Stamp Cut Day to Conservatives and Libertarians

Here is an article with more info.
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/families-brace-billions-food-stamp-cuts-set-8C11505320

Families brace as billions in food stamp cuts set in

Benefit cuts to food stamp recipients kick in Friday, a move by Congress that will siphon $5 billion off a program that helps one in seven Americans put breakfast, lunch and dinner on the table.

As president of the Food Bank for New York City, Margaret Purvis expects those cuts will draw even more people to organizations that already provide 400,000 meals a day to hungry city folks.

"Our members are panicking," she said as time wound down before the benefit decreases go into effect. "We're telling everyone to make sure that you are prepared for longer lines."

Needy Americans who receive food stamps through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are expected to suffer an average loss of $36 a month from a $275.13 per household benefit. There are a near-record 47.6 million Americans, representing 23.1 million households, on the program. The cost of the program will hit $63.4 billion in 2013.

SNAP allocations built into President Barack Obama’s 2009 stimulus bill are coming to an end, leading to the cuts. Over the past few years, a bipartisan group of Democrats and Republicans have voted in favor of the cuts in exchange for increased education funding and school nutrition programs.

At a protest Tuesday on Capitol Hill, a group of Democratic lawmakers who opposed the cuts to food stamps demanded that the funding be reinstated.

"It was a piece of legislation that said let's change nutrition standards, let's get junk foods out of our schools, and let's make sure that our kids can have those fruits and vegetables," Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro told the Huffington Post regarding the nutrition bill.

"There was no money for it (the nutrition bill). The price of it was $2.2 billion. That came from the food stamp program and all of us here complained," the congresswoman said. "And we were opposed to that but we knew that it was a good first step in getting the Hunger-Free Kids Act."

There appears to be little organized effort to prevent the cuts from going into effect, however, despite the political protest and the worries of charity leaders like Purvis.

Direct consequences
For some SNAP families living in the neighborhoods of New York City, the cuts may have direct consequences. But the plight of the hungry extends well beyond the city’s five boroughs.

Programs such as SNAP create economic waves across their communities. In the case of food stamps, those consist primarily of the grocers who benefit when food stamp users shop in their stores.

"This isn't just a New York issue," Purvis said. "In the world of hunger relief, food stamps are supposed to be the first line of defense."

Amira Watson, a working single mother of four from Brooklyn, recently had to sign up for food stamps after her marriage ended and she lost one of the two jobs she was working after having to take maternity leave.

Though she applied a few months ago, her approval won't take effect until Nov. 1 — the same day the cuts are slated to kick in.

A medical assistant working nights at an assisted living facility for the disabled, Watson worries that the SNAP benefits won't be enough to feed her four kids, who range in age from three months to 15.

"The job is good with medical benefits but not with the paycheck," she said. "I'm always in the hole with bills. If I pay the rent I'm sacrificing the light, if I pay the light bill I'm sacrificing the gas bill. It's always something."

Watson said she finds herself relying on food pantries and other stopgaps against hunger while struggling to provide for her family.

"Thank God for the food pantry and the Campaign Against Hunger," she said. "While I'm waiting for all this processing — glitches here and glitches there — thank God I could go there and shop for some food. I got some baby milk for my newborn, got rice, got a nice amount of stuff that will sustain us until something comes up."

People on food stamps have become punching bags for politicians and pundits who tell tales of stamp recipients who use their allocation on beer and junk food and pile their shopping carts high.

And yet, while the stock market soars to new heights and income disparity widens to Great Depression-era levels, SNAP participation has doubled over the past 10 years and increased nearly 25 percent over the past four.

"Something has changed about America since the financial crisis, and the still-widespread popularity of the SNAP program is emblematic of that shift," Nick Colas, chief market strategist at ConvergEx, a New York-based brokerage and investment research firm, said in a report. "The American economic record, based on the food stamp data, is still pretty lousy."

Colas said the economic hit from the food stamp cuts will be roughly $10 billion, with the numbers probably not telling the full story.

"It may not matter to the economic data on which Wall Street hangs its fedora, but it is certainly enough to spark a political response," he said. "How this plays out, I honestly have no idea. We are in uncharted waters here, as the historical record clearly shows."

 

36 dollars a month less when a family of four already receives over 600$.

A couple less rib-eye steaks a month, boohoo!

If you can't feed a family of four on 600$/month you have other problems.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/01/food-stamps-snap-cuts-farm-bill/3346341/
site where the 600$ figure comes from

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http://news.wgcu.org/post/food-stamp-cuts-could-hurt-south-fla-families
This site says they may only lose 10$ a household in South FL

 

How do you know this? Less food stamp money does not mean they have less food.

Also shame on you glych for not demanding the poor get $2000 a month in food stamps. How dare you take food out of these peoples' mouths.

 

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We still have a half trillion dollar deficit on top of $14 trillion total debt; at some point everything's going to be cut. You don't have to be a bootstrapping, grumpy dad conservative to understand or accept that.

 

I'm sorry but CNN spews utter crap, their headline story today is of a woman whose 55 and can't work due to heatlh(that is understandable and she should have help) then it mentions her 2 grown adult daughters live at home and can't work bc 1 had a child and 1 is pregnant. Nobody forced these women to spread their legs and create a baby, moreover when they found out they were pregnant and knew they were teetering on the edge of being able to pay bills they could have had an abortion and saved the child and themselves a headache.

Nobody is forcing these girls not to work THEY CHOSE to have kids and thus aren't working, so the liberal media tries to spin it as how horrible we are for cutting their food stamps. If these women focused more on work and less on having kids KNOWING food stamps would save them, then they wouldn't be in such a pickle

Im all for helping the poor who really can't work, but if you're poor and aren't working due to dumb crap like this, then starve for all i care, you are not trying. The elderly mom deserves food stamps she has a disease she can't control, whats stopping the 2 daughters from helping out? Absolutely nothing that they couldnt control and it begs the question, where are these 2 girls baby daddys......clearly out of the picture....isnt that wonderful, you have 2 new babies missing their dads and moms cant support them.....liberal utopia

 

Should've known you'd appear in this thread. Don't complain about single women having unwanted children as you blindly support a party that not only seeks to restrict abortion access, but also pushes for cursory sexual education and birth control access. You don't want the hungry masses? Teach them how to prevent having children until they're ready. Conservatives can't have it both ways.

Aren't you busy working on the Houston Metro Rolls Royce program, anyway?

 

There was bipartisan support to reduce this because the increase was only intended to be a temporary increase as part of the stimulus package. While the economy is not great, it's also no longer in crisis mode, so crisis spending ends.

It's no different than the Bush tax cuts expiring became a "tax increase" despite it just reverting to the previous baseline.

 

well smarty pants if you can't afford to feed yourself what on earth makes you think you should be having a child.....with a dad who clearly isn't in the picture bc the articles states its basically the mom and daughters struggling to get by on a few hundred a month and now $44 whole dollars are cut out.

I don't know what these fools eat but I just bought 2 giant packs of salmon at costco for $24/each and each one is about 4 meals of salmon, so about $6/meal of freaking salmon. I also bought a giant box of lobster tails for $94 at costco that had 10 lobster tails....lobster.....so i don't know what the media is spewing about how they can't eat on $150/week bc i cook at home 4-5 nights a week and my grocery bill is about $150/week and i eat damn good and so does my girlfriend

 

Agreed. I'm not against legislation proceeding as planned to levels existed prior to crisis times. What I am against is the perception that the majority of people receiving food stamps do so to live high on the hog. The meme that somehow people seek out, or wish to remain in, poverty is a destructive line of thought to our discourse.

 

this is comical to say the least

breakfast = cereal w/milk = $1 meal
lunch = chicken breast w/seasoning = $2-3 meal
dinner = salmon = $6 meal
snack - apple = $1
snack = nutrigrain bar = $.75

so my day, yes me mr moneybags spends a whole $12/day when i don't eat out omg how will the poor survive in this country if someone who makes alot of money eats for $12/day on days he doesn't eat out

 

thanks, Obama!

I thought that was da1.

and what happened to eddiewinslow's engagement and personal struggle?

 

across the street you know whats funny and sad.....my fiances crazy little niece did indeed pull a knife on the mom and other kids....at 11.

The mom knows shes crazy but doesn't want to give her up bc if she goes off to get help the mom loses a $600+/month check so the mom jokes about her crazy daughter and does nothing about it

how sad is it that poor people think like that? Im surprised my girl made it out and got into med school but she says she always was embarassed by her family begging for things and never wanted to be like them

hopefully more poor people will be like that one day bc its sad to keep a clearly mental child away from help she needs bc your a bum and need the $600/month check

 

Oh absolutely. I just assume it's a given that eddie's posts are idiotic at this point.

 

do i call you an idiot major? temper temper my friend, i've never called you names

 

See those green bars? Major's got them because he calls a spade a spade and has been posting reasonable opinions about sports, politics, tacos and what not for years.

 

or because he has made 26,000 posts. volume shooter

 

this was planned all along and they still get more than enough money to keep their families from going hungry.

Sensationalize much??