Congress, [take] SNAP out of it please! (Part I)
Posted by Michael McKenna on Thursday, April 28, 2011
Note: This is part one of a two-part series. Part two will be published the week of May 2, 2011.
In engineering, if a machine works like it’s designed to, that’s considered a success, and no further tinkering is needed. In music, if you sing the notes in the songbook, you’re not going to want to change the chords. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is considered common sense in most disciplines. So why mess with what works in social policy? The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP for short, which used to go by the name of food stamps, is a real success story in public policy. But the program’s ability to respond as designed for low-income families is threatened under the proposed budget resolution that passed the House of Representatives a few weeks ago.
So let’s look back at the blueprint, and then consider why the proposals in the House budget are unsound. The basic idea behind SNAP is that low-income families spend a disproportionately higher share of their incomes on food, and are simultaneously strained by coping with housing, transportation, and medical costs, not to mention a low level of savings. Consequently, federal funds flow to households that need some extra (hence Supplemental in the name) money to afford enough food to feed their families each month. In good times, when jobs are plentiful, fewer people qualify and fewer people apply for benefits, which mean the money the federal government spends on the program goes down.
But in a downturn like the Great Recession, SNAP rolls grow rapidly as more and more Americans lose jobs, and those that do have jobs (over 46% of SNAP recipients are working poor) earned wages that don’t cover living costs. The goal is that those families who receive benefits don’t have to go hungry because their food budgets are supplemented by the cash transfers they get from SNAP each month. This is especially critical for low-income children: about 20 million kids are on food stamps. And the added bonus is that local grocers get paid by customers who otherwise might not be able to afford food at their stores. Win-win, right? And it’s not just theoretical. Here’s the proof:
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 increased benefit levels for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program…One goal of the program changes was to improve the food security of low-income households. We find that food expenditures by low-income households increased by about 5.4 percent and their food insecurity declined by 2.2 percentage points from 2008 to 2009…These findings, based on data from the nationally representative Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement, suggest that the ARRA SNAP enhancements contributed substantially to improvements for low-income households.(Emphasis added. Source: USDA Economic Research Service, http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err116/)
That’s right. If the stimulus had not included additional money for SNAP, this country would have seen even higher levels of food insecurity! Even though food insecurity over the past few years are at record levels, the good news is that many Americans were NOT less certain about where their next meal was coming from because of the program. That proven effectiveness is why Share Our Strength has made connecting eligible children to SNAP a critical component of the No Kid Hungry strategy. At a time when governors and mayors across the country are recognizing that childhood hunger is an important education, health, economic issue, congress is taking steps that would undermine our collective efforts and progress, particularly for SNAP. In part II of this blog, I’ll explain how Congress’ proposals affect the strategy and what you can do to help protect SNAP.
April 28, 2011 | 0 comment(s) | Tags: congress, no kid hungry, snap
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