| Here's the full story. The stimulus bill, when it passed, increased the "monthly benefit" amount of food stamps (the amount a family receives each month). It costs a lot, but it generates even more in economic stimulus. Spending money on food stamps is one of the most stimulative things the U.S. government can do because the money is spent immediately and then it multiplies in the economy. Every $5 spent on food stamps generates about $9 in economic activity. That's more than you can say for tax cuts (especially tax cuts given to rich people).
When it comes to food stamps, the government is constantly playing a game with money. Food stamp benefits tend to go up each year, and so does inflation. So the question is: Does the amount of food a recipient can purchase go up, go down, or stay the same? In the past, the government has quietly cut benefits by making the increases to food stamp benefits not keep pace with inflation. Food stamp participants were receiving more in dollars but less in food, and may have not noticed the cuts. At least not immediately.
This time around, the opposite seems to have happened. The stimulus increased benefits based on projected food inflation. Food inflation did not occur at the projected level, leaving recipients with more food than the government meant to give them. FRAC, the big hunger lobby group said:
Anecdotally, we heard that the ARRA [the stimulus bill] boost let some SNAP recipients keep going to the supermarket in the third or fourth week of the month, rather than going to a soup kitchen starting after the second week.
So clearly, the government was being WAY too generous to these poor hungry people. And, on that basis, they figured that this was "free" money to go and cut. (After all, people were getting more food with their food stamps than the government had planned when they made the food stamp benefit increases in the stimulus. I suppose the plan was for food stamp recipients to line up at the soup kitchen in the second week of each month instead of the third or fourth.)
The Senate first reduced food stamps by $11.9 billion to pay for aid to states, teachers' salaries, and Medicaid. All good things, but should we be robbing Peter to pay Paul when our economy is like this? Then the Senate dipped their hand back into the pot for more food stamps money with the Child Nutrition bill.
The way these cuts will take place is by ending the extra benefits provided for in the stimulus earlier than planned. In short, when November 2013 hits, a family of four will see their monthly food stamp benefit drop by $59. What a way to pass bills delivering benefits to Americans now, delaying the suffering built into them until three years into the future.
Of course, none of this will happen if it doesn't get passed by the House and included in the final joint bill passed by both chambers. And we've got a few years to reverse these decisions but it will be a lot harder to get the money added back to the food stamps than it would be to just keep it there if it wasn't cut in the first place.
The biggest stupidity of all is that if Congress was engaging in stimulus spending now - sufficient stimulus spending instead of this pay-as-you-go, no net increases in the budget BS - then we could jumpstart the economy, and help families get jobs, make money, and no longer NEED food stamps. And THAT would certainly decrease the amount of money needed by the food stamp program in a much less painful way than the course they have chosen. |
