Posted on 07/15/2012 1:21:39 PM PDT by mdittmar
A proposal that passed the U.S. House Agriculture Committee Thursday could kick as many as three million people off government food assistance next year, including the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants.
As part of the Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act of 2012, the committee recommended cutting funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (also known as food stamps) by $16 billion over 10 years.
Most of the savings would be achieved by doing away with categorical eligibility, or the practice of waiving an asset test if recipients qualify for other government welfare programs. About half of current SNAP recipients were ushered in because they receive non-cash benefits from the government like help with bus fare and child care, according to the Congressional Budget Office. More than 40 states use categorical eligibility to dole out food stamps.
Under the House's proposal, families would have to make less than 130 percent of the federal poverty line, have less than $2,000 in resources and meet other minimum federal eligibility standards. Tightening the eligibility requirements would shave about 4 percent — between two and three million people — off SNAP's caseload every year, according to CBO and White House estimates.
"If you need food stamps, you should meet the criteria," Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said Wednesday.
Legislators told the Huffington Post they wish to close loopholes — not let people go hungry.
"I want poor people to have food," Rep. Reid Ribble (R-Wis.) said. "I want children to eat well."
Advocates for the poor argue, though, the changes will cut off families that need help.
Families that own a modestly priced car or have more than $2,000 in savings will no longer qualify, analysts Dorothy Rosenbaum and Stacey Dean wrote in a policy brief for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. But many of the working poor need a car to get to work.
"On average, the families above that limit who qualify for SNAP as a result of categorical eligibility have combined child care and rent costs that exceed half of their wages," Rosenbaum and Dean wrote. "The $100 per month in SNAP benefits that they receive covers about one-fifth of their monthly food budget."
The committee also approved an amendment sponsored by Rep. Martha Roby, R-Ala., requiring state agencies to verify applicants' immigration status before passing out benefits.
Roby proposed the amendment in an effort to crack down on fraud, she said in a news release. In a recent study of five states, the Office of the Inspector General of the USDA found 8,594 families had enrolled in SNAP using potentially invalid Social Security numbers. Illegal immigrants are not eligible for most social welfare programs, including SNAP, but some of their U.S.-born children are. Under Roby's proposal, Americans would be denied assistance if they shared a household with anyone who was not authorized to live in the United States.
“Benefits funded by American taxpayers should go to American citizens," Roby said. "It is reasonable to require that an individual be a U.S. citizen or an eligible applicant in order to receive federal benefits."
Immigrant advocates recoiled at the amendment.
"This amendment is plainly directed at the children of undocumented immigrants," wrote Sarah Jane Glynn, a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress.
The move is "utterly unnecessary," she argued, because the children who receive the SNAP benefits must already meet eligibility requirements, including proving citizenship or legal authorization to be in the country. Illegal immigrant parents who are struggling to feed their U.S. citizen children are already less likely to apply for food aid.
"Forcing household members who would not be receiving nutrition assistance benefits to prove their legal status would be antithetical to the goals of the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program, which is to provide critical nutrition benefits to American citizens who might otherwise go hungry," she wrote.
NAH!... putting many off the food stamp list would increase the burglary car jacking and mugging.. and you know the robbery’s and other con games..
Which are going on anyway whether their on food stamps or not..
How much of the call on foodstamps is from illegales?
I’d be perfectly willing to see illegales faces kept stuffed with food... on the bus all the way to Mexico. Shoot, send them back to Mexico in first class airplane seats. It would be cheaper than keeping this up.
Now that just pisses me off.
If these are people who have enough excess funds that the foodstamps are superfluous... well they shouldn’t be getting them. They should be for those who would be catastrophically without food if it weren’t for the stamps.
Austerity in Europe is going smashingly well, and I expect riots here over the next few years as the new conservative supermajority unwinds the nanny state. The “kids will starve” theme will be sounded with every fiscally sound policy passed, and in the end our nation will once again be solvent.
Pray for America. It ain’t going to be easy.
Certain items (e.g., cigarettes, alcohol, etc.) are supposed to be off limits for food stamps, but I see them used all the time. Checkout people either don’t care or are intimidated and don’t push the point. One time when I saw it happen in the checkout in front of me, I told the lady (?) that my money paid for those food stamps and that I’d appreciate it if she bought food with them. She told me to “F@## off”. I called the manager over and she was not allowed to check out. She was more than a little miffed.
Sounds like a system scammer. A rich person who fell on hard times might still have such a pricey purse, but that much cash???
Hell our problems just keep growing. Here in Michigan they’re trying to figure out how to house and feed migrants who are without work due to crop failures.
Automated registers with scanners are supposed to know about this, but it doesn’t get around the checker in on the scheme who rings up so many pounds of beef or kiwi fruit in place of the bottle of wine, etc.
The migrants came for fat times. So why won’t they leave for lean times?
She may be selling that high priced stuff around her neighborhood for whatever she can get for it. Goes on all the time. Food Stamps = Massive fraud. And virtually no policing.
“Personally I think they should tie food stamps directly to farming by way of farmer’s markets and the like.”
At the Silver City NM Farmers Market I have to accept food stamps as well as some sort of wooden nickle worth a dollar. Last market all vendors were told we are required to dispay a provided 17”x11” glossy color laminated food stamp poster at our booths. If I have to advertise for ‘SNAP’ it will be very reluctantly.
To process my beef and lamb I need to transport the stock 4 hours thru the desert each way and across state lines to the nearest USDA certified processor. Why can’t some of the USDA’s funds be transfered from SNAP to either create more or closer USDA processing facilities?
On some market days last year nearly 1/3 of the money I took in was in the form of wooden nickels or SNAP checks. The whole USDA is an out of control fluster cluck! They also were the ultimate entity allowing 300,000 acres of the Gila National Forest to burn this year which is the watershed I irrigate out of.
It was crowded - so Mrs. Principled says “can we go in front of you since we’re buying your expensive groceries?”
egads
Bully for Mrs. Principled. We need more, much more, of that spirit.
I propose that Elizabeth Stewart (the author of the article) go find some of these hungry people and feed them herself is she’s so concerned.
Or could she have been a “buyer” for a local convenience mart? Which would not dare carry some other store’s generics, too obvious.
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