Congress is poised to cut food stamps, taking away an extended benefit created by the 2009 stimulus before its original expiry date and setting up an unprecedented “cliff” in food stamps, now known as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits. To demonstrate how hurtful this might prove, hunger advocate Joel Berg recently spent a week eating according to the SNAP budget.
“I had done it in 2007, as well,” he said. “This time, it was much harder, because the price of food has increased more than the benefit has increased. Last time, for instance, I ate an apple a day, along with other food. This time, I couldn’t afford a single piece of fruit.”
Berg is the executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, which represents New York’s 1,200 nonprofit soup kitchens and food pantries and its 1.4 million residents that cannot afford enough food. (A more extended version of our conversation is below.) He and other hunger advocates are incensed over the SNAP cuts, which will pay for a sweeping child-nutrition bill. The First Lady–supported legislation is pending in the House, and has passed the Senate. In essence, Congress is planning to rob a very poor Peter to pay a very poor Paul.
The cliff in food stamps means that one month, a family will receive a set amount of money, about $4.50 per person per day. The next month, they will get less. In his week eating according to the SNAP budget, Berg shopped for the first three days as if he received full benefits. For the second two, he shopped as if he received cut benefits. The result? Less food, or less healthy food.
He took photographs to demonstrate. Here’s what he could buy for a week with current benefits:
Here’s what he could buy with the cut benefits:
That means he does not get this food, under an Obama-supported plan:
Some progressives are making a claim that this is not actually a cut, that this is somehow just a return to the baseline benefit. But that claim is really preposterous and offensive. The Center for Science in the Public interest, they’re progressive, but they have put that idea forward. If they had a cost of living increase and wage increases over five years, but then we returned them to the salary that they had five years ago, my guess is that they would see that as a cut, rather than a return to the baseline.
People in America have been socialized into expecting some sort of Frank Capra-esque happy ending all the time — somehow, magically, in the end, this will all work out. I’m sorry, but for low-income people, that is not what happens. This means people are going to suffer more. Low-income people are already in trouble due to the recession. They are suffering mightily to make sure that there is food on the table for their kids. And now, they’re going to have less of it.
Read more at washingtonindependent.com
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