Posted on 06/06/2017 7:16:55 AM PDT by george76
From our file named "Duh." The Alabama Department of Human Resources says 13 counties that reinitiated a work requirement for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as the food stamp program, saw an 85% drop in recipients.
The counties had been exempt from the work requirement due to high levels of unemployment. But with the economy recovering, the state of Alabama restarted the work requirement on January 1 this year, which resulted in the massive drop in SNAP participants.
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Nationwide, there are about 44 million people receiving SNAP benefits at a cost of about $71 billion. The Trump administration has vowed to cut the food stamp rolls over the next decade, including ensuring that able-bodied adults recipients are working.
...
During the Obama administration, the number of SNAP participants nearly doubled – as did the SNAP budget. Certainly, the economic downturn was at least partly to blame for that. But the real culprit in the explosion of SNAP recipients had to do with a radical change in philosophy by the president – a result of his efforts to "transform" America.
As it was originally constituted back in the 1960s, the food stamp program was supposed to help the desperately poor. Gradually, over the years, eligibility requirements were expanded .
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
I’ve known people that were truly desperate to eat and would do any work necessary to ensure they could provide food for their family. That 85% of these people stopped using SNAP because of work requirement tells me that the vast majority did not need this program to get food, it was just to get free stuff (as we already knew). This also reinforces other stories about how SNAP users are buying crap like chips and soda with the money.
Inconceivable!
My sister worked at a Flea Market and there were people there selling food they bought using SNAP. They did a brisk business as people knew you could get it much cheaper from them.
Food stamp recipients also buy high-end groceries (steaks, etc) with their food stamps and then resell these items for $.50 on the dollar.
IMHO, the 'allowed' list for food stamp use needs to be radically altered. No more junk food. This would also cut the number of users.
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This will sound like a liberal comment, but it’s a serious question:
It’s easy to conclude from the article that a lot of able-bodied adults were getting benefits they didn’t need because, as the article indicates, enrollment in the program dropped 85% when a work requirement was re-instituted.
But that reading assumes they “voluntarily” dropped, i.e., that upon being required to work, they chose not to do so and dropped their SNAP benefit request, implying they didn’t really need it anyway.
A different reading, however, would be that the government simply cut them off if they didn’t have a job. Nothing voluntary about it. In fact, that’s pretty much what the article says, i.e., no work, no SNAP benefit.
This is one of those issues that might bear a little closer scrutiny before jumping to a conclusion, I’m thinking. Like I said, this will come off sounding like a liberal comment, but I don’t intend it that way. It’s conceivable that someone simply can’t get a job where he lives and now can’t afford to eat either. I’m skeptical of that conclusion applying very broadly, but it’s certainly possible that it’s happening in some cases.
And then there’s the issue of: if you get a job and start making money, do you lose access to SNAP altogether? That is, do you lose more than you gained by working, for that’s sometimes a real issue with government largesse.
Add to that the probability that a whole lot of people on SNAP (the able-bodied ones without dependents now, not the families) are likely making money in the cash economy and you get a pretty confusing mess to sort out.
When Rudy initiated “work-fare” in NYC in the 90s, more than 300,000 of the then 1 million welfare recipients disappeared......overnight!
I live in the black belt. Although it has rich soils, that’s about it. Only so many people can work in agriculture. There is no industry to speak of. A big part of the lack of development goes back to George Wallace. When they were putting in the Inter State system, Wallace made sure that I-85 stopped in Montgomery. It was supposed to go west through the black belt and hook up to the Inter States in Mississippi. He basically said the “N’s” ain’t getting any road. No good roads equals no investment.
It works every time it’s tried.
No, I wondered the same thing. If there are truly no jobs in an area, then it stands to reason that the SNAP enrollment will drop drastically in that area. Simple logic.
I don’t know how the whole thing works and confess that I don’t pay attention.
I remember when it was built in my area circa 1980.
I've always looked at the black belt as an area that never fully recovered from the great depression, for some reason.
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