Cuts to SNAP Will Hurt Texas Families Struggling to Afford Food
What follows is a statement from the Center on Public Policy Priorities regarding yesterday's vote by the U.S. House of Representative's Agriculture Committee to cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as Food Stamps):
"Yesterday's vote by the U.S. House of Representative's Agriculture Committee to cut SNAP by $33 billion will hurt the families struggling to afford food in this time of high unemployment and economic distress. A cut of this magnitude would affect over 300,000 Texas families who will struggle to put food on the table without the support SNAP provides. SNAP was designed to expand when unemployment is high and contract as economic conditions improve. In this way the program assures that Texans stay healthy during period of job loss and stimulates our struggling economy. Cuts to this program will only weaken our nation's ability to weather these rough economic times and return to prosperity."
From what I read on the subject, food stamps went up 22% from 2003-2007 when unemployment went down. This indicates that states don't vet the applicants very well. As part of Obama's stimulus, states received more funding for signing up more participants.
ReplyDeleteMany of the cuts would return benefit levels to where they would be had the Dems not increased them in the stimulus measure.
Moreover, there was an an improper payment rate of nearly 4% in 2011
according to the Government Accountability Office, that doesn't even include lottery winners.
Obama's failed policies have made more people eligible for food stamps. Hope and change!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info. I'm actually impressed by an "improper payment rate" of "nearly 4%." In administering most government programs, with often Byzantine requirements and exclusions, some of which do not make a lot of sense, I would have expected it to be higher.
ReplyDelete"Obama's failed policies"? You may have forgotten, but he was sworn in January 2009, after the disastrous year in which the economy tanked under Bush. And it's awfully hard to have a "failed policy" when dealing with a do-nothing Congress who openly places defeating Obama over the welfare of the country.
But Fox would be proud.