GOP Bamboozlement on SNAP Benefits
SNAP benefits have been in the news over the past few weeks as Congress tries to pass a Farm Bill. The Senate passed a bill that made some cuts to the SNAP program, while the House separated SNAP from the Farm Bill and proceeded to cut SNAP so that 5 million people would no longer be eligible for food support. The GOP ( including the locals who don’t have much to say other than to repeat the talking points sent to them each day, and the media, unfortunately) are pushing messaging that tries to link the SNAP program with economic recovery. This messaging ignores some key points:
- Most SNAP participants were children or the elderly. Nearly half (45 percent) of participants were under age 18 and nearly 9 percent were age 60 or older. These aren’t people who are going to be in the job market.
- Many SNAP Participants Have Jobs. More than 30 percent of SNAP households had income in 2011, and 41 percent of total participants lived in a household with earnings.
- Number of SNAP Participants Has Been Increasing Since the 1990’s. From the USDA:
SNAP participants declined steadily through 2000 but began to rise in 2001 and increased each year through 2011, except for a slight dip in 2007. The increase was substantial from fiscal year 2010 to fiscal year 2011. Average monthly participation increased from 17.2 million individuals in fiscal year 2000 to 40.3 million in fiscal year 2010, and to 44.7 million in fiscal year 2011.
In spite of the GOP message brigade on this thing, what the program statistics themselves tell you is that 1) we have too many elderly and children living in poverty and 2) we have too many people who are actually working who don’t make wages that will get them out of poverty:
- We know that there’s a good number of full-time employees of the State of Delaware who qualify for SNAP, child care assistance and/or school lunch programs because they aren’t paid wages that keep them out of the poverty level.
- Military families will redeem about $100M in SNAP benefits. This $100M is just from what gets redeemed in commissaries — and doesn’t account for what might be redeemed outside of the base. But the USDA found in 2011, that 5,000 SNAP beneficiaries called themselves “active military”.
- Low wage workers from places like Walmart, McDonalds, etc. are often eligible for SNAP and other anti-poverty benefits. These people have jobs, but not jobs that keep them out of poverty. I can’t find a national survey that captures the workers who are receiving SNAP benefits, but this article takes a report done by the Democratic staff of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce and extrapolates from there, using the numbers of people making $10/hour or less. But with 26M+ Americans working for $10 or less, there’s a substantial number of people who work eligible for SNAP. Here is a good summary of the numbers of workers by state (where the data is available) who are taking advantage of state Medicaid and SCHIP programs.
- Middle class jobs are disappearing and 3 out of 5 jobs created in the Great Recession have been low wage jobs. In other words, people who may have skills, training and education for what was middle class employment are taking the kind of jobs that teenagers used to do.
An honest read of the data would show you that the increases in the SNAP program aren’t part of the Welfare Queen narrative or even the weak economic recovery narrative — it is a narrative of increased numbers of people falling into poverty because their working wages don’t support their families. As fast-food workers are getting alot of attention to their rolling strikes, this ought to be pretty plain. It would be nice if Democrats would take up this argument and help these families push for the kind of wages that might eliminate the need for SNAP participation, instead of just wringing their hands about cutting benefits. The NJ reports today that our Congressional delegation is gaining in clout in DC — it would be useful to the people of Delaware if they’d take some leadership helping these folks get the kind of salaries that might justify the kinds of cuts to these programs they so theatrically bemoan AND vote to cut. Because why should taxpayers subsidize a low wage economy?
Tags: Featured, Republican Bamboozlement, Republican Liars, SNAP
I’d love to see some smart-ass nation open a foreign aid program to assist poor American families. If Republicans won’t help our poor families, maybe the Russians will.
Didn’t Chavez do just that post Katrina?
Chavez provided heating oil at low/no cost to states where poor people were having a tough time heating their homes. Including here in Delaware if I recall correctly. Do these things get much press?
The House can pass a farm bill that gives welfare to corporate farm interests but thinks hungry people are just moochers.
We subsidize our corn then complain when Mexican farmers who can’t compete with subsided products come to this country for economic reasons.
A record number of people on Food Stamps is defensible? Really?
Perhaps the total failure of government schools and the oppressive reach of government is to blame?
Liberals want more and more poor and hungry people and for the nut jobs here, lobbying for a crooked tax code is at an all time high under the failed President.
It must be galling, Mike, to see someone you respect so little achieve so much more than you.
“A record number of people on Food Stamps is defensible? Really?
Perhaps the total failure of government schools and the oppressive reach of government is to blame?”
Actually, the failure of conservative policies is to blame. Wages people can’t live on and a failing public sector are the natural consequences of free-as-possible markets and making profit the only priority of the private sector.
But please, don’t let me stop you from parading more of your ignorance.
A record number of people on Food Stamps is defensible? Really?
Actually it is — and I went through a great deal to explain that. Geezer takes the short route though — what we are looking at is a failure of conservative policies. If trickle down worked, there would be fewer people on SNAP, right?
Some savings could come from making it more along the lines of a true “food stamp” program, similar to WIC, where only certain items are eligible or rationed. I have no problem with paying to help those who need to eat, but people who use their SNAP cards to go buy seafood, steaks, or cold subs at Royal Farms give the program a bad name. Help people to have everything they need, but don’t let them give what they want. It is to be a hand up, not a hand out.
Yeah, poor people should eat like poor people. Who are they to eat the same seafood we do, just because it’s good for their
health?
There is, by the way, a serious move afoot to limit what SNAP recipients can apply their benefits to, but it’s based on the fact that people buy a lot of junk food (especially sugary drinks). The idea is espoused by many in Congress and governors’ offices, but the agencies that work with food banks, etc., won’t get on board because a lot of the big food corporations support food banks with big donations.
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/08/food_stamp_choices_should_people_be_allowed_to_buy_junk_food_with_their.html
The problem we have is that you get more caloric bang for your EBT buck with junk food. Fresh food cost more. Even though places like the Lewes Farmers Market (one of the best) accepts EBT for people who resources are stretched it remains difficult. Consequently, increasing benefits, does not mean people will opt for fresh and nutritious versus junk. Healthy eating is not just a question of money. It is also a question of culture, habit, discipline and other social factors.
I see nothing wrong with some constraints on what SNAP benefits are used for. Alcohol is a food and if we can constrain the use of benefits for that, then certainly we can constrain the use of benefits for other things for which there is little to no nutritional benefit.
I’m amused by the anti-regulation and anti-big-government types looking to increase BOTH on groups of people whose behavior they are highly motivated to control. Wonder what the overlap is between the folks who were screaming about Bloomberg’s restriction on the size of sugary drinks that could be sold in NYC and those who don’t want SNAP benefits to cover them?
Healthy eating is not just a question of money. It is also a question of culture, habit, discipline and other social factors.
Actually, no. Healthy eating is a question of knowledge and access. If you know what optimum nutrition is, you can make healthier choices. Provided, of course, that you have access to grocery stores where you can get those choices. That is one of the biggest reasons why cities (in particular) are working on the problem of food deserts. But poor people throughout the ages have often not eaten in the most optimal manner — the signature dishes of some groups of people are made from offal. Because that was the protein most plentiful to them — even though that might not be the healthiest choice out there.
“If you know what optimum nutrition is, you can make healthier choices.”
That is generally true that with knowledge, one “can” make healthier choices. But it is also true that many do not make healthier choices. I eat junk food. Not a lot of it, but I eat it. I have both knowledge and access. I am not unique.
While knowledge and access are critical elements, I will point out that tradition, culture, and other sociological factors are also critical elements. The Paula Deens represent some of that tradition and culture when it comes to food (not junk food, rather unhealthy food). And to dismiss habit as an element in that mix presumes that people when presented with knowledge will eliminate bad habits, even though we as a nation are obese (along with a plethora of many other bad habits). You don’t think bad habits play a role for rich and poor alike? For robots maybe, but not for the human race I belong to!
I’m not saying “poor people should eat poor people food;” I’m just opposed to subsidizing unhealthy habits or paying for them to have fancy meals that the average middle class person cannot afford because they receive no help. WIC is a good model, I think.
But it is also true that many do not make healthier choices.
Indeed, and in this day of prepackaged and processed food, it is harder than ever to decipher packages or even to know what is in the sandwich that you are buying. There are too many places where the neighborhood grocery choice where an apple is nowhere in sight. Middle class choices aren’t routinely available to poorer people. And even then there are plenty of folks with middle class choices who don’t know that fat free or multigrain or cholesterol free don’t quite mean what you’d think they mean. It is also about understanding some basic economics — buying a bag of beans and a bag of rice and making your own beans and rice will not only be cheaper, but will also get you way more fundamentally food than the box of rice and beans on the shelf, and will also have fewer processing ingredients.
The Paula Deens represent some of that tradition and culture when it comes to food
Paula Deen is exactly the wrong example for this. Because she represents an exaggerated version of Southern Cooking that suits a certain stereotype. Chefs like Nathalie Dupree or Edna Lewis who focused on a rural food tradition that had access to fresh fruit and vegetables, used the fat available for seasoning only AND who were involved in the kind of food preservation that is key to some southern cooking. Deen’s cooking doesn’t make the best out of what is there, it asks you to spend a lot of money on supermarket ingredients to indulge in a lot of empty calories. Bottom line, Paula Deen represents the culture she created for TV mainly and there are *multiple* Southern food traditions worth exploring that would prove that.