Though
frequently portrayed by conservatives as an overly generous, fraud-plagued,
dependency-inducing disaster, the federal food stamps program actually serves
millions fewer people than are eligible for the assistance. Liberal California
sports the lowest enrollment rate and conservative Tennessee holds one of the
highest, underscoring how the reality of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps) differs from the rhetoric about
it.
“Only about half of the Californians who qualify for help get it,” the Los Angeles Times reported
Saturday, due to understaffed agencies mishandling applications, “onerous
paperwork requirements, inhospitable county benefits offices and confusing
online applications.” The state only eliminated its requirement that all food
stamps recipients submit to fingerprinting in late 2011, months after Texas had
ended the practice. Other unusually stringent and often humiliating procedures
for proving continued eligibility remain in place in the state, however. One
single mother quoted in the Times’s story was nearly kicked off the SNAP rolls
when the state demanded receipts for her day care expenses.
The most recent
participation rate data for food stamps comes from fiscal year 2010.
That year, nearly 51 million Americans were eligible for the program butonly 38 million were enrolled. Maine and Oregon were the only states with all eligible residents enrolled in SNAP. Tennessee had the
sixth-highest enrollment, at 92 percent. The Midwest and Southeast had the
highest regional enrollment rates. Previous research on food insecurity has
shown thathunger is concentrated in rural
America.
Beyond relieving hunger and
the developmental and educational problems associated with it, SNAP also
provides major economic benefits. It’s among the most efficient forms of
economic stimulus, returning nearly two dollars in activity for each dollar the government spends. The program lifted 4.7 million people out of
poverty in 2011
alone.
Despite representing millions of SNAP
recipients in their
districts, House Republicans earlier this summer declined to pass a renewal of
the program. They plan to vote on a bill that would cut the program by $40
billion over ten years when they return from recess in September. Such cuts
would kickmillions of Americans out of the program. The unprecedented move to split farm subsidies from food
assistance has endangered the anti-hunger
programwhile raising taxpayer-funded
guarantees to farm owners.
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