Well does this just piss me off on many levels. There is news out that a mother killed herself and shot her two children [ one child has died and one still critical at the writing of this and it really bothers me ] after a 7 hour stand off in the Texas on Monday because she had been denied SNAP and had been run around the ringer since July for a lack of ‘ sufficient information’. Really people? I don’t think a woman that has desperately tried for months to receive help is a scammer for starters and secondly I can’t wait for the asshole critics to exclaim she should have gotten a job. I’m not sure if she was employed but would these critics hire her? Do you realize the bulk of people receiving SNAP are single mothers and children in poverty? Don’t forget after taxes she has to pay for daycare, rent, utilities, gas, maybe a car payment, insurance amongst others and surprise: food. This article is worth the read. It breaks my heart to read about the young girls facebook posts. She was asking for food stamps not like she was asking for cash. As you will find out the only thing you can get with this benefit is, shocker, FOOD. Do you think she is going to fence Cheerios on the street for Cigarette money? We are talking a maximum benefit of $6,312 a year. Three lives for $6,312. The maximum benefit for three is $526 a month. Holy crap, $526 that’s easily a bar and entertainment bill for me in a month. Maybe I should swear off gold digging women(, who eventually leave me) and booze for a month and give it to a needy family. I’M BEING DEAD SERIOUS. Yeah, yeah maybe I don’t have all my facts about this situation in Texas but where there is smoke there is fire. I think what makes me most mad that on top of this tragedy there are going to be countless arm chair quarterbacks blaming the mother. Unless you’ve walked in her moccasins STFU. That means especially you Mr & Mrs One-Percenter !
Food Stamps. From here on out I am going to refer to the program under its ‘new’ acronym of SNAP which stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Make no mistake This is a welfare program. This program is run by the Department of Agriculture. Food Stamps became SNAP in 2008 and this capped off unwinding of the actual physical paper ‘stamps’ to the debit/credit (EBT) type cards that began to roll out in the late ‘90’s to cut down on administrative costs and fraud. Eligibility is based on income and resources. This is one of many alphabet welfare programs that the government puts forth and it might be possible for a person to qualify for assistance elsewhere. This is especially true for pregnant woman and young children ( WIC and AFDC for example). Although the Department of Agriculture is the overlord, the actual nuts and bolts of administration belongs to each state and its Health and Human Services Department. Fun, fun. The GENERAL guidelines are as follows: a single person cannot make more than $1,180/mo gross ( before taxes) that's $14,160/yr which is $7.37/hr for 40 hours a week ( Federal Minimum Wage is $7.25). For a family of four the amount you must be below per month is $2,422 that’s $29,064/yr. I can’t tell you how many jobs I see pay between $16,000 and $25,000 and many are for college graduates. If you’re a single mother of two its $2008/mo you must be below. And what do you get? Well the maximum benefit for a family of four is $668/mo for a family of three it’s $526/mo and for a single person such as myself it is $200/mo. That’s the number I am going to play off of. Fifty dollars a week., $7.14 a day, $2.38 a meal.
The term stamps actually predates how the program was administered for much of its lifespan and that was in dollar denominated coupons. Prior to these coupons the predecessor, surprisingly called the Food Stamp Program (FSP), ran for a little less than 4 years from 1939 to 1943. Basically at the tail end of the Depression when many welfare and public good programs were in full force. This first program was a Groupon in its day. You purchased dollar for dollar coupons that could in turn used dollar for dollar for any type of food but for every dollar you bought you received fifty cents in blue stamps which could be used to buy food that the Agriculture Department deemed in national surplus. Phew. One, this is how the Department of Agriculture got their hands in this and two, the thinking was it could bring surplus farm commodities to those in need during the high unemployment rate during the depression. It was actually a brilliant win-win. The program stopped when surpluses ran low and unemployment became manageable ( Thank you World War II !!) Enter now the war on poverty. In 1961 President Kennedy signed an Executive order for a Food Stamp Program which ran until 1964 as a pilot program until President Johnson signed the Food Stamp Act into permanent law. It’s basically the program we know today. People were given physical dollar denominated vouchers. Brown was $1, blue $5 and green $10 which they used like cash at their grocery store on eligible items ( more on that as we take this journey). It has been a political mess, hot potato and sticking point and you name it ever since.
So can I exist on the standard food stamp allotment for my state for one month? I don’t know where I first got the idea but it certainly isn't original. Back in 2007 a few members of Congress undertook the Congressional Food Stamp Challenge in response to a push by activist groups to bring awareness to the plight of those living on food stamps. There were also some journalists and other activists that partook. Recently, there has been a documentary entitled Food Stamped whose thrust is living healthy on a food stamp budget. In any event, even as unoriginal an idea this is, I am going to partake in it. Who knows what I will learn. I’ll be honest I don’t think I can do it so this is going to be a challenge. Sadly, no matter the outcome the whole project is fluff. Like the show Undercover Boss, in which the CEO of a company does front line grunt work for a week but returns to the boardroom, at the end of my little experiment, I too will go back to my normal life and food budget. I know there is an end. Many people on food stamps don’t have that luxury. Along this journey I think I will interject some facts and maybe explore some rumors in attempt to learn more about life on food stamps. Ultimately, my synthesis for this undertaking was born out of many far flung experiences that impacted my life. Specifically, there are two that come to mind. First, many moons ago I read an article in the center column of the Wall Street Journal ( the human interest column) when I was still in high school about, for a lack of a better word, poor people in this country and how they survived in the then current economic downturn. It highlighted a laid off auto worker and it told of how cheese pizza once a month was a huge treat for this family and how the father would hunt squirrels and they would sometimes eat them for the meat. This was during the recession of the late ‘80’s and at the time I had no idea about the economic forces that swirled around in this country. That article stayed with me to this day. The second impetus began with the financial meltdown starting in 2008 and up to and including this Occupy Wall Street movement. I personally think the divide between the have and the have not’s is growing and nobody cares that the have not’s are literally left out in the cold and many times not by their own design. It’s ripping this country apart. So there you have it. Wish me luck.
