...Others are less worried about the immediate cuts. Parke Wilde, associate professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition at Tufts University, said that in real dollars, the cuts brings the program's aid levels back in line with where they were in the mid-2000s, before benefits were boosted as part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.
"That's neither great nor terrible," Wilde said.
He said the bigger issue is the debate in Congress over whether, and how much, the SNAP program could be cut in years to come. The House of Representatives passed a bill in mid-September that would eliminate about $39 billion form the SNAP budget over 10 years, while the Senate has approved a bill that makes much smaller cuts to the program."
CNBC
"Food stamp recipients face a massive benefit cut set to kick in when stimulus funds expire Friday. The nationwide cut “is equivalent to about 16 meals a month for a family of three,” according to a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis using the USDA’s “Thrifty Food Plan.” CBPP called the roughly $5 billion annual cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program “unprecedented” in “depth and breadth.”
“If you look across the world, riots always begin typically the same way: when people cannot afford to eat food,” Margarette Purvis, the president and CEO of the Food Bank for New York City, told Salon Monday. Purvis said that the looming cut would mean about 76 million meals “that will no longer be on the plates of the poorest families” in NYC alone – a figure that outstrips the total number of meals distributed each year by the Food Bank for New York City, the largest food bank in the country. “There will be an immediate impact,” she said."
Salon
20 comments:
"At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge, ... it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."
"Are there no prisons?"
"Plenty of prisons..."
"And the Union workhouses." demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"
"Both very busy, sir..."
"Those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
Realizing Democratic's rape literally, and harass elderly Pro-lifers in-between, in Colorado at least, Scrooge pre-conversion is my greatest hope regarding America's self-diagnosed cures available.
Maybe it was all false votes; more likely fuckwits who just done fucked themselves forever. No going back. No back to go to.
Roberts nor four others are to blame for this. That "cure" could have very well been no such thing. You assholes.
If you fail to create jobs, you have no taxes to spend. The stimulus was just play money, not a real increase in wealth.
Obama focused on giveaways to friends and low-info voters instead of increasing the nation's wealth.
Zimbabwe on the Potomac.
Pogo for the win.
One thing that sticks with me is the stimulus should have been used to create additional slots in medical schools and all levels of nursing programs. I wonder if any were?
(Chick, apropos as usual :)
but a family of four with no changes in circumstance will receive $36 less per month, according to the USDA.
Boo fucking hoo.
Learn to cook you lazy dumbasses.
One 5 lb chicken =$5.00
4 russet potatoes = $1.00
Can of green beans = .$69
1 onion = $.20
2 carrots = $.15
Milk 2 1/2 cups = $1.50
Broccoli crowns = $2.00 (really expensive now for some reason)
$10.54
some flour, salt, black pepper, red pepper flakes, vegetable oil, crisco = $.?? who knows pennies per serving you should have this stuff in your pantry.
Meal One: Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, milk gravy, green beans (used the chicken legs, thighs and wings) Left over gravy for next morning breakfast.
Meal Two: snack the next day= ate the wings
Meal Three: Broccoli, carrot chicken soup. Using the backs and one half of the chicken breast. (poached them both and saved one for later) Add another $1.50 of ingredients and make some biscuits you lazy butts. Left over soup and biscuits for tomorrow.
Meal Four: Chicken salad sandwiches. Add a few pennies worth of chopped onion, celery, mayo and some sliced bread. If you really want to splurge, buy a tomato and some lettuce. Slice up an apple or some other fruit.
For less than 20$ you can make meals for TWO people for three days.
Plus....the cats got to eat some of the scraps and the chicken liver, hearts and gizzards. Evidently my chicken had several hearts and livers. /shrug
“If you look across the world, riots always begin typically the same way: when people cannot afford to eat food,”
You can afford to eat "food". You cannot afford to eat junk food, lobster, steak. If we have riots over the lack of Cheeze Puffs or Ding Dongs we deserve to go to Hell in a handbasket.
So true, DBQ. If only we all ate like that. And the kicker is the junk food industry profiting from tax payer dollars.
Meal five: Break open bones of whole chicken carcass, roast the whole thing again to full darkness, boil carcass, strain, reduce to desired intensity. Result: 1 qt. liquid gold. Cook with pasta for robust chicken noodle soup.
Mmmmm....
I've stood next to a drunk guy in soiled pants using his EBT for one last little bottle of something in the bottle shop downstairs shortly before closing. Us three non drunk witnesses were all rather stupefied silent in profound sympathy for the situation. Or something. Bemusement. Confusion. Anger. Resentment. Sanctimony. A whole range of emotions available, but mostly pity and a pervading sense of whatcha gonna do?
@ Chip.
That sounds really good. I'll do that the next time I roast a chicken.
Frugal tip. Buy pork chops with the bone in...they are a bit cheaper. Bone them and throw the rib bones into a freezer bag until you have a bunch. Make soup stock. I also throw into baggies in the freezer for future soup stock, chicken bones, bits and pieces of left over chicken. Beef bones and beef left overs. Celery, onions and other sad tired vegetables. Who cares if they get a bit freezer burned. You are going to boil the bejeezus out of them anyway. Boil, cool, skim, strain. Refreeze in empty 1 quart juice containers.
Soup is CHEAP!!!!
a pervading sense of whatcha gonna do?
People who need assistance in buying food.....should be given actual 'food' and not money that can be spent on other things. Cheese, milk, bread, meat other staples. NOT junk food, sodas, booze or luxury items. Allowing that poor man to buy booze with government money is worse than enabling a relative who is an alcoholic. At least a relative thinks they are helping.....the government doesn't care.
Should, is the key word. But how to police it and eliminate the fraud?
If you want those other things....do what we do. Work, earn money, spend it on what you want. If you want MY money, I get to tell you what you can buy.
Alas...we do not live in a perfect world.
Dust Bunny Queen said...
Plus....the cats got to eat some of the scraps and the chicken liver, hearts and gizzards.
Meal Six: Skin the cats, roast with potatoes, onions, and a few sprigs of catnip, just for the irony.
You guys are missing the point. This is a smokescreen intended to obfuscate the real issue. They are telling you that SNAP drops back to pre-stimulus rates and therefore most people will think that less people are on SNAP. That isn't the case. It's a numbers shift. Oh look, SNAP leeches are getting $36 less which puts it at pre-stimulus levels. We are improving and never mind that we have more SNAP'pers than ever before.
As DBQ said, boo fuckin hoo.
Food stamps are one of my pet peeves.
I feed six people wholesome meals--hot breakfast, packed lunches, snacks and dinner--not to mention cook and share all kinds of stuff for others, on a strict grocery budget of $650 a month. My friend, the single mom who lives (shhhhhh! don't tell the welfare people!) rent-free with her parents, gets $549 a month for herself and two young children. Guess which one of us has room in the budget for manicures and car detailing.
If people are destitute, give them bags of beans, rice and root vegetables. They'll figure it out or starve.
DBQ ref: SNAP EBT etc. said...
Should, is the key word. But how to police it and eliminate the fraud?
Enforcement is always the key. It can be done. Licenses and permits can be suspended, or eliminated, and proprietors who enable the fraud jailed.
Undercover observation is really easy, in this case...extremely easy. Can be done by officials or just offer a bounty if proof can be provided. $100 would do it nicely.
I don't think we have the guts to enforce the laws we say we want enforced.
It's like drunk driving...it persisted widely until jail became de rigeuer, loss of license for years or permanently occurred.
Most of us are sentient beings...only took once for me to get it about driving drunk, and I was barely drunk (.010).
I didn't do a repeat. Wonder why? I don't.
At the time, people warned about the "stimulus" that there's nothing more permanent in government than a temporary program, that the temporary funding increases would become the new baseline, & any attempt to actually end them as intended would bring howls of penury and starvation politics from the gatekeepers of bloat, the tribunes of the bereft, and the professionally aggrieved.
Mitch H.....a classic simple example of how "temporary" becomes "permanent" is the Michigan Income Tax. The Army hooked me up and I departed for Asia around early 1969, at which time my home state had a "temporary" tax in place, by a Republican Governor named Romney. I stayed a while and didn't return until late 1971. At that time I discovered a permanent income tax, twice the size of the temporary one, put in place by another Republican Governor named Milliken.
Said Milliken also implemented a closeted VAT tax and it remained in place, gleefully supported by Democratic Governors, until last year when finally a Republican Governor with conservative values eliminated it. This history is part of why I trust neither party.
A lot has been said and written about the decline of Detroit due to various causes, most with elements of truth in them...but I've yet to read or hear anyone point out that this huge increase in local taxation occurred precisely while the decline was occurring as well.
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