Why are SNAP benefits so confusing that even social workers can’t figure them out?

  Crystal Ortiz, a master’s student studying social work at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration, has been receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNAP) benefits since 2017. The $200 a month she received made it possible for her to buy more fresh produce, especially bagged salad kits that made it easier for her to eat a healthy lunch when she didn’t have a lot of food prep time.

  This January, that was threatened when she received a letter stating that her benefits would be canceled if she did not fulfill a 20-hour-a-week work requirement.  When I first met with Ortiz, she stated that “I would have to make major cuts to the food that I get” if she lost her SNAP benefits.

What it tastes like to eat what you want for the first time

  All my childhood grocery shopping memories center on being poor: Walking 10 minutes from our two-bedroom home in the Malden Housing Authority’s projects to the local Stop & Shop and filling the cart with juice, eggs, and bologna. There was the joy of adding the small amount of treats we could afford — at the time, that meant fresh bakery chocolate muffins, apple turnovers, and Gushers fruit snacks — and the embarrassment of putting some of the food back at the register when it rang up over our limit.

I ate lobster on food stamps and it was delicious

  I was a food stamp kid for a few years in the early 1990s when my mom started college. I remember the first time we went to the H-E-B grocery store on the south side of San Antonio with our stamps. We always drove to a store in the next neighborhood over to shop. My mom had worked at the closest H-E-B when she was pregnant with me. People she went to high school with shopped there and so did her former in-laws. There was no way my mom was going to walk into that store with a wad of food stamps. We felt enough shame that we needed the help without adding in other people’s judgment.

Scaling back SNAP for self-reliance clashes with the original goals of food stamps

  Trump administration officials are trying to cut enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP but still sometimes called “food stamps.” They say that too many people are getting this aid in a strong economy.

  The program helped about 35 million low-income people buy food in 2019. The average recipient gets US$128.60 a month, about $1.40 per person per meal.

Trump’s newest budget would take food away from working families

  There are dozens of programs on the chopping block in the Trump administration’s fiscal year 2021 budget proposal. Yet the administration’s most blatant attempt to gut the programs on which American families depend comes in the form of additional cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the nation’s largest nutrition assistance program. The proposed budget contains a devastating $182 billion cut to SNAP over the next decade, a reduction of approximately 28 percent compared with the baseline level estimated by the Congressional Budget Office.

Coercion and charity are opposites

  The entire welfare-state way of life is based on the concept of force. Through the threat of arrest, prosecution, incarceration, and fines, the American people are forced to be good, caring, and compassionate to others.

  Here is how the process works. People are forced to deliver a percentage of their income to the federal government, which in turn delivers the money to others. It’s not a 100 percent turnover, of course, because some of the money is used to cover the expenses associated with performing this service, such as salaries for bureaucrats in the IRS and in the federal departments, and agencies that distribute the money.

I’m disabled. The Trump administration’s new rule could take my SNAP anyway.

  Last month, the Trump administration introduced a new rule to cut Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. The rule is geared towards so-called “able-bodied adults without dependents” who are unable to document 20 hours of work a week. When I heard the news, I double-checked my schedule, and I was in the clear: 35 hours that week. If I had missed a shift or two, then the outlook wouldn’t be so optimistic.

Food banks warn they will not be able to meet demand if food stamp cuts take effect

  On the heels of the thirty-two-day government shutdown, a proposed administrative rule change to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps) once again threatens food access for people who rely on the program for basic needs — this time for an estimated 755,000 people.

  For households that qualify for SNAP, February, the shortest month of the year, was a long one. During the government shutdown, 40 million Americans who participate in the program experienced as many as 60 days between the issuance of their February and March SNAP benefits. The shortages in household budgets meant that food banks across the country were inundated.

The Poor People’s Campaign is just getting started

  At the National Mall in Washington on Saturday, two huge banners hung on either side of an elevated stage, framing the Capitol building in the background: fight poverty not the poor, they read. That was the central message of the thousands of people who cheered, yelled, chanted, danced, and sang in support of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.

  Over the past 40 days, more than 2,000 people have been arrested across the country as they demanded a right to adequate food, housing, health care, education, fair wages, and other basic necessities. They stopped traffic, petitioned state legislators, and engaged in other organizing and nonviolent direct action in 40 states and the nation’s capital. Many of those activists were on hand Saturday to mark the completion of the campaign’s first phase as it continues the work that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others who founded the original Poor People’s Campaign in 1968.

House Republican cuts to nutrition assistance would harm families in every state

  Budgets, it is often said in Washington, are moral documents meant to convey priorities. House Republicans’ fiscal year 2018 budget makes their priorities crystal clear—namely, delivering tax cuts to millionaires at the expense of America’s struggling working families.

  The budget’s radical, sweeping cuts to programs that everyday Americans rely on should be a wake-up call for anyone who believes that congressional Republicans are more reasonable than President Donald Trump. Like the budget the Trump administration released in May, House Republicans’ budget would gut services for people with disabilities, eviscerate Medicaid, cut Social Security, and hike costs for families struggling to afford college.

Sally Steenland: How to reduce poverty and save taxpayers $4.6 billion per year

  A single number can change the public debate on an issue that seems stalled. Two weeks ago, such a number appeared in a report by the Center for American Progress and the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment that connects a higher minimum wage with decreased costs in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps.

  The number is $4.6 billion, and it represents how much money taxpayers will save annually if the federal minimum wage is raised to $10.10 per hour. Paying workers a higher minimum wage will reduce their need for federal assistance, creating huge savings for the taxpayer-funded program.

Katherine Green Robertson: The changing objectives of government assistance

  Under the Obama administration, "reforms" to federal assistance programs have simply increased the programs’ recipients and spending rather than implementing more oversight or accountability. Specifically, the administration has taken proactive steps to recruit Americans into programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and water down eligibility requirements for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program (TANF). Work requirements for recipients, previously tied to TANF eligibility since 1996, were rendered optional by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for state enforcement in 2012.

Robert Wilkerson: Taking food from the poor

  There they go again, picking on the poor and defenseless. A recent Farm Bill pushed by Republicans would give billions of dollars in subsidies to large corporate landowners, while cutting the food stamp (SNAP) program so deeply that five million people would be kicked off. Most of those who would lose benefits (83 percent) are already living below the poverty line. In Alabama, about 910,000 people would lose their benefits on November 1, 2013.

Daren Bakst: The Costly and outdated farm bill

  Congress is once again taking up the farm bill - and continuing to treat agriculture like it was 1933, not 2013. The result: billions of taxpayer dollars going to waste.

  This is unacceptable. It's time for lawmakers to make reforms that reflect the reality of modern-day agriculture.

Melissa Boteach: House budget cuts to nutrition assistance are bad for the economy

  The House Republican budget for fiscal year 2014 proposes converting the nation’s bedrock nutrition-assistance program into a capped block grant to the states that would result in approximately $125 billion in cuts over the next 10 years. Forcing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to become a block grant, in addition to the extra $10 billion in cuts to the program within the budget proposal, could result in up to 12 million to 13 million people—mainly children, seniors, and people with disabilities—losing their nutrition aid.