Kudos to Senator Townsend and Representative Osienski
Starting last Friday, State Senator Bryan Townsend and State Representative Ed Osienski began participating in the Food Bank of Delaware’s SNAP Challenge, where they live for a week off $31.50, which is the average national Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefit per person. You hear all the time from evil conservatives about how good the lazy poor have it when they get their food stamps and other government assistance. Indeed, to hear them tell it, the approximately 68,300 Delaware households who receive SNAP benefits in 2012 lived high on the hog at taxpayer’s expense.
So, how is it going for them? Rep. Osienski reports on his experience so far:
Day 1 of #SNAPChallengeDE: For breakfast, some toast with peanut butter, a banana and skim milk. It’s a decent breakfast, but there’s no coffee because I couldn’t afford a can of it on my $31.50 allowance.
Before we went grocery shopping, Sen. Bryan Townsend and I sat down and carefully planned out our week and scanned the ShopRite circular — things we normally don’t think about when going to the grocery store. For the week, I bought eggs, milk, bananas, peanut butter, pasta, a jar of sauce, black beans, rice, yogurt, carrots, multi-grain bread and a cooked chicken. All of that ran me $31.42, just under the limit.
One of the things I immediately noticed: I couldn’t buy the peanut butter I normally prefer because it was too expensive, so I had to opt for a less-healthy, but on-sale jar. Same goes for the sauce and beans.
I’m now into Day 4 and the midpoint of the Food Bank of Delaware’s #SNAPChallengeDE. Probably the toughest part of this challenge has been living within my means – and my limited budget.
I started Sunday with a breakfast of eggs and whole wheat toast and a glass of skim milk. I spent 11am to 4pm at the Newark, Delaware Community Day event, where I would normally buy food from the many vendors throughout the day. However, having already spent my $31.50 for the week, buying food at the event was not an option, so I had to brown bag it. I prepared two peanut butter sandwiches, a banana and some baby carrots and some bottles of water to last me the day (the funnel cakes sure looked good). When I got home, I prepared a pasta dinner with some more carrots.
The weekend was a real challenge. I rarely prepare meals at home during the weekend. I tend to go out to eat or get take out and watch a good game on TV. That seems to be one of the biggest challenges for families depending on supplemental assistance: you don’t have the freedom to buy a luxury food or just dine out occasionally, things most of us take for granted.
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Oh to make politicians at the national level live as we do, starting with no healthcare insurance and no pension and moving on to the minimum wage.
Why don’t they try shopping at Save-A-Lot and visit Family Dollar for some items? $31.50 per person is not great but it is doable. I personally don’t spend much more than about $35 a week on my own groceries, so $31.50 is not great but it is possible if one looks elsewhere besides shop-rite and Trader Joe’s.
Also as a side note, SNAP is supposed to be a “supplemental nutrition assistance program” meant to aid in paying for meals, not to be the exclusive way to pay for meals. That would imply that an individual has literally no money and is living a poor existence forever, rather than being able to move up. Moving up…? Believe it or not, there are people who have come from abject poverty and made a decent living in America. Yes, some of them, the ones healthy and capable of working, ought to try it sometime.
Finally, Representatives, if you are concerned about the price of food then you should monitor what energy policies you support. Big fans of ethanol subsidies? Those raise corn, and thus food, prices on many food items. Like taxpayer handouts to Bloom Energy and Fisker in the name of “creating green jobs”? Those cost ratepayers money, and not all Delmarva Power ratepayers are even middle class, let alone the 1%. Energy price increases in the name of “saving the planet” are often passed down to businesses, who then pass the cost along to consumers, making food prices more expensive.
Dollar stores are good for cleaning supplies and other non-food items, but the only food you can get there are snacks.
Some dollar stores do have some regular food. Not much in terms of healthier choices, but there are stores with fresh milk and eggs; frozen food; cereal, etc.
“I personally don’t spend much more than about $35 a week on my own groceries,”
Really? You must eat out a lot and count that towards entertainment.
BTW – I extend my kudos as well. Being poor is expensive. Having the experience of being nickles and dimed like a poor person should give these guys some compassion when it comes time to squeeze more money (in the form of fees and fines) out of those least likely to be able to afford them.
Kudos, living hand to mouth is never easy but thousands of people in our state do it everyday. Whatever happened to the war on poverty, there seems to be a war on everything else, as a matter of fact I would support a war on war/violence!
One problem is that we subsidize unhealthy food, while unsubsidized healthy food has to compete with those products.
Has anyone here ever been to the Food bank HQ and seen the unbelievably plush offices there? That’s why they are not on my donation list.
The Food Bank warehouse located at 14 Garfield Way south of Newark? That is what you call “plush?” I wonder what your definition of “spartan” is? A cardboard box?
Further, when you donate food to the food bank, they distribute the food. They don’t sell the food to line their pockets or furnish “plush” warehouses. So really, if you have a problem with charitable organizations that live high on the hog on your monetary donations, like the Catholic Church with their untold billions, then the Food Bank is really your best bet, since you can buy the actual items you want to see go to those who need it.
Plush offices, really? Like DD said, you can always donate the food. You can even do it directly to either the Food Bank or one of the food closets it assists.
How about donating directly to the Claymont Food Closet, for example? No plush offices b/c there aren’t any offices. We do, as does the Food Bank of Delaware.
To me, the Food Bank of Delaware is an essential resource. They do a fantastic job. I shudder to think what Delaware would be like without them.
I agree that the legislators deserve high praise for this. They have now experienced first-hand what it’s like to have to make do on next to nothing. Next time a bloviator like Colin Bonini rips off his lobster bib to decry the lazy poor, or Sen. Simpson writes about how the Cato Institute has convinced him that people like becoming dependent on handouts, they’ll know how to respond.
I’d be curious to know if SNAP recipients typically use the benefit as their exclusive source of funding for food, or if it serves most recipients as a supplement. (In my experience, it’s the latter). There may be no way to know, but if most recipients use it to supplement their total purchase, a demonstration of what it’s like to buy and live on food purchased exclusively with SNAP benefits may not demonstrate much.
the food bank of delaware is an outstanding organization, people in our state and nation go hungry on a regular basis, the repubs and the libertarians will tell you governent has no business being involved in charity, but yet refuse to donate to private charity, all in the name of religion. I dont know what book there reading but it certainly cannot be the bible!
Shout out to Congressman Carney for bringing this to DE.
Food banks?
Can someone get Townsend an iron?
I LIKE the rumpled look…