SNAP and Preserving Our Poor

Over the past couple of weeks, I've worked on research into SNAP; visited the offices of Durbin, Harkin, McConnell, and Bachus for meetings with staff or Congressmen; and watched the House debate on a renewed Farm Bill which cuts over $20,000,000,000 from SNAP.

And I've had enough.

I'm very grateful for the members of Congress and their aides for meeting with groups of people last Tuesday, but I'm very disappointed in this Congress. Republicans seem out to cut everything they possibly can, and the Democrats seem to be sacrificing their integrity in the name of "bipartisanship" and "compromise" (from which they both are getting horrible deals out of this bill).




Before I get into all of this, let me explain SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program).

SNAP, formerly known as Food Stamps, provides financial aid for millions of low-income Americans. This aid is to be used to alleviate the costs of food. A program similar to SNAP was first introduced in 1939 to bridge the gap between farmers with surplus goods and hungry Americans who couldn't afford to pay market price for these goods. That program ended in 1943 when the surplus was deemed over. A pilot program for Food Stamps started in 1961, and the Food Stamp Act was signed into law in 1964. There have been many major changes since then, including the switch to EBT instead of stamps and a change in language to follow. In 1996, major reform came with the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). A major reason this legislation was passed under the Clinton administration was to combat dependence on welfare programs. SNAP has not been reformed since then, except for the name change in the 2008 farm bill.


SNAP monthly payments amount to about $133.44 per person and $276.15 per household receiving benefits. This amounts to about $4.39/day ($133.44/(365 [days in a year]/[months in a year]) -- days in year/months in a year to find average days in a month [30.42]).


$4.39 a day. 


You have to eat for $4.39 a day. 


At McDonald's (SNAP no longer covers fast food, so I'm scraping the bottom here), my father's favorite menu item, the Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese, costs $4.69 (my father and my family as a whole hardly eat at McDonald's - in fact, I'm not even sure how I remember that he liked that burger). That one burger--from a McDonald's, no less--costs 20 cents more without sales tax than a person on SNAP has on average to spend for an entire day.

My commerce to and from work (also not eligible for SNAP) costs me $2.10 each direction. This distance isn't reasonably walkable, but it isn't a huge distance. To go seven stops on the metro twice a day costs $4.20, leaving me with 19 cents I could spend on food, assuming I had no other way to pay for food.

You may be reading this post on a computer. You may be reading this post on a laptop. Heck, you could even be reading this on a MacBook Pro. Let's say you have a 13" laptop without retina display. You decided to go with the 2.9GHz instead of the 2.5GHz because you wanted the extra speed. Let's say you go without adding any upgrades to this stock version, without adding any software like Pages or Keynote--let's say you are going to use Google Drive for everything, which requires 24/7 internet connection (another problem altogether, but let's pretend)--, no additional services like applecare or one for one. With free shipping, this computer is going to set you back $1,499, or 341 days, 11 hours of food stamp value--almost a year of food for our poorest in America accounts for that machine you've probably got on your lap and which you sling onto your bed when it's time for dinner.


The Food Research and Action Center has organized a SNAP challenge for a few members of Congress to live on what a person on SNAP lives on for food. They live on $31.50/week, or $4.50/day.

I have been monitoring how much I've spent on meals over the past few days. On Sunday, I bought groceries that came out to about $30 at the Whole Foods near where I live (I quickly realized how bad of an idea a Whole Foods was, but it's the only grocer within ten or fifteen blocks of me). It's Tuesday night, I've had one meal bought for me by my office, and I'm already about halfway through what I bought only two days ago. Starbucks is completely out of the question ($4.50 on a triple grande cinnamon dolce latte ain't happenin'). I can't imagine having to be constantly worried about how much I've spent on food in a week, and I can't imagine living on such a tiny budget.



Today, Republicans in debate stated that it was critical to pass this farm bill to make sure we support our farmers through the uncertainty they face every year. None of these men said we needed to support the poor, even though their logic and arguments could be so easily applied to those in poverty. (Note: I want to go into this further, but I'm tired and it would detract from the issue.)

This year's new House farm bill boasts cutting $40 billion in unnecessary spending by combining organizations, slimming others, and destroying others completely. SNAP is seeing a cut of over $20 billion.

Countless representatives discussed how important deficit reduction is to them. The Democrats constantly talked about how important it was to pass this "bipartisan" piece of legislation, and urged their colleagues to vote for the bill in order to ensure a future for the farm bill. Republicans also echoed this, but consistently cited fraud in SNAP, which was going to be solved by cutting funding to the program.

First of all, SNAP has probably the lowest rate of error of any American agency. Only 3% of payments represent an overpayment and just 1% represent overpayment. This means SNAP has an error rate of 4%. In the same year (2011), Medicare had an error rate of 6.7, more than 150% that of SNAP. This means for every $100 spent by the taxpayer on SNAP, only $4 is being allocated incorrectly while almost $7 is being allocated incorrectly for Medicare (which has seen a pretty significant rise in policing). This low error rate means that SNAP is working the way it was intended to, without wasting money; there is no need to make SNAP run more efficiently because it is already there.

I've also heard all kinds of testimony about SNAP recipients buying ridiculous things with SNAP payments (in lieu of food) or trafficking their stamps to buy drugs. I don't understand why so many Congresspeople are bent on demonizing the poor, but that's another story altogether. The fact is that SNAP has ensured that its payments are not being used incorrectly. Recall that all SNAP payments are electronic and on EBT cards now. This allows SNAP to monitor where and what is being bought with SNAP payments. In 1993, about 4 cents of every dollar were trafficked. Between 2002 and 2005, it was found that only about 1 cent for every dollar given was trafficked. Not only is this a substantial drop, and one that indicates that SNAP is devoted to reducing fraud within their base, but this amount of error is incredible. In 2012 alone, nearly 4,500 undercover investigations were conducted on stores that accept EBT, resulting in 1400 disqualifications and 700 sanctions.

On a logical note, it doesn't make sense to punish those on SNAP for spotting items in stores that are accepted for SNAP by that store. For instance, a man on Twitter pointed out that one gas station accepted EBT for Red Bull. Sure, if a person is buying the Red Bull on EBT then it is okay to blame that person. However, to see that a store attempting to conduct this business means that the store is at fault, not your everyday EBT recipient.

The proposed cuts in the House farm bill would cut almost 2 million people off of SNAP funding, even though they are eligible through Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). South Carolina, my home state, has a high participation rate in SNAP and 19% of the state population would be affected by SNAP cuts (17% in North Carolina, home of Davidson).

In FY2010, it was determined that about 17,823,000 children were participating in SNAP (and another 1.3m were eligible for benefits, but didn't receive them). About 6,102,000 participants on SNAP were children under the age of 4. About 27,900,000 individuals receiving SNAP benefits were members of a household with children. These cuts mean 210,000 kids will be thrown off of free school meals.

The Lancet released a series of reports on the importance of child and maternal nutrition during the first 1000 days of life of the child, from conception until age two (and is releasing a second series, which Bread for the World is celebrating). These 1000 days pretty much determine the future of that child.


If we, as a nation, can't care for our children, our future is completely shot. We will have no leaders, no businesspeople, no inventors. And, as a nation, if we can't care for our poor, we are worth nothing. It is morally incomprehensible that anyone would ever support reducing our aid to our most vulnerable, especially when our current aid level is already so low. The future of our future hangs in the balance, and the lives and welfare of so many of our brothers and sisters have been lain on the line.

The next five days of debate over amendments to the 2013 farm bill are critical. Call your representatives. Email their offices. Tweet them. Whatever you can do, please let your voice be heard.