As of today, more than 47 million Americans who receive food stamps—already defined as families living close to the edge—will have to make do with less money and fewer meals during this month, thanks to Congress.
A temporary increase to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the official name for the food stamp program, that was passed in 2009 as part of the economic stimulus package officially ran out yesterday, meaning a family of four receiving nutrition assistance will get $36 less a month—a drop from $668 a month to $632 or $432 over the course of a year.
The program is used by 1 in 7 Americans, mostly all in households with children, seniors or people with disabilities. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the cuts will amount to 21 meals per month, since participants spend an average of $1.40 on each meal. With the Democratic-controlled Senate passing a bill that cuts another $5 billion from the program, the pain for participants could get greater later this year when House and Senate lawmakers try to hammer out a farm bill.
The cuts “will be close to catastrophic for many people,” said Ross Fraser, a spokesman for Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief charity. Feeding America has estimated that this SNAP reduction will result in a loss of nearly 2 billion meals for poor families next year.
Adrianne Flowers, a single mother in Washington, D.C., raising five kids with SNAP benefits, said the roughly $600 in food stamps she gets from the federal government never lasts the whole month.
“I’m barely making it,” Flowers, 31, told CBS News.
SNAP has increasingly been on the radar of Republicans in Congress because of the big rise in the number of participants after the Great Recession and housing crash. An additional 21 million people have been added to the rolls since 2008, with more than 1 in 4 U.S. children living in homes that get food stamps.
Even veterans will feel the pain—U.S. Census Bureau data show that in 2011, some 900,000 former U.S. military personnel lived in households that received food stamps.
“The cuts are going to make millions of people hungry,” said Jim Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, a not-for-profit public policy firm focused on ending hunger in the U.S. “It’s going to send people into a charitable system that’s already overwhelmed and screaming for help itself. And it will make life harder and worse for millions of children, seniors, veterans and people with disabilities.”
In fact, everyone will feel the pain from the food stamp cuts. According to the left-leaning Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think-tank, the cuts will hamper the money flowing into every U.S. state, in some cases by hundreds of millions of dollars.
In addition, in a six-year study Children’s HealthWatch, a nonpartisan pediatric research center, recently found that young children in SNAP families were at significantly lower risk of being underweight, which is linked with poor nutrition and developmental delays.
“Thirty-six dollars is significant,” said Marilyn Tomasi, spokeswoman for the Mid-Ohio Food Bank. “It might not be significant for some, but it certainly is to a struggling family who is hungry. You could have a whole chicken dinner once a week for that.”
