Free Republic

'It is time for this exemption to end,' said Sen. John Boozman... Able-bodied people without dependents must work 20 hours a week or be in job training to qualify for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). But during the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress suspended the work requirement. Businesses are open again, yet 25 states have not fully reinstated work requirements. Of those, seven states allow work waivers in certain areas of the state. These seven are Colorado, Kentucky, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, and South Dakota. Eighteen states and territories have kept the work waiver across the entire state. They...

According to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) officials, the Trump administration will propose a rule Tuesday to reduce unwarranted access to food stamps, removing 3.1 million from the program and saving taxpayers $2.5 billion. President Trump has argued that many Americans now using SNAP are not in need, given the strong economy and low unemployment. Recommended changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) would limit access to food stamps for households with savings and other assets. The goal is to end automatic eligibility for those already collecting other federal and state assistance. According to Reuters, the residents of 43...

Food stamp participation dropped below 40 million for the first time in eight years, according to the latest numbers on food stamp enrollment from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The most recent USDA data reveals that 39,604,428 people were enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—the program that administers food stamps—as of April 2018. The last time enrollment dipped below 40 million was in February 2010, when 39,588,993 people received SNAP benefits. The latest data on enrollment shows that overall enrollment in the food stamp program has reached historic lows, reaching its lowest point in eight years. But...

Overall enrollment in the nation’s food stamp program has dipped to its lowest level in eight years, according to the latest statistics released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The latest USDA data reveals that enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—the federal government program that administers food stamps—dropped to 40,083,954 in March 2018. The last time enrollment in the food stamp program reached that level was February 2010, when 39,588,993 people participated in the nation’s food stamp program. Although overall enrollment has reached its lowest point in eight years, food stamp enrollment has been declining steadily since...

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. ... Nationwide, there are about 44 million people receiving SNAP benefits at a cost of about $71 billion. The...

Mamaw encouraged me to get a job—she told me that it would be good for me and that I needed to learn the value of a dollar. When her encouragement fell on deaf ears, she then demanded that I get a job, and so I did, as a cashier at Dillman’s, a local grocery store. Working as a cashier turned me into an amateur sociologist. A frenetic stress animated so many of our customers. One of our neighbors would walk in and yell at me for the smallest of transgressions—not smiling at her, or bagging the groceries too heavy one...

A woman destroyed a convenience store in the US after being told her benefits card would not be accepted. Shocking footage shows the woman throwing stock from shelves and screaming before being restrained and physically removed from the store.

It’s a case of miracles and wonders up in the Pine Tree State, folks. A report from Rachel Sheffield and Robert Rector at the Daily Signal takes a look at welfare programs and efforts to reform them, particularly in the area of food stamps. They note that one of the fastest growing segments of welfare programs over the last decade has been applications for food stamps by ABAWDs, or able bodied adults without children between the ages of 18 and 49. These are folks who are determined to be otherwise able to work but without a source of income....

One trillion dollars—that’s how much the government spent last year on means-tested welfare aid, providing cash, food, housing, medical care, and social services to poor and low-income individuals. The food stamp program is the nation’s second largest welfare program. The number of food stamp recipients has risen dramatically, from 17.2 million in 2000 to 45.8 million in 2015. Costs have soared over the same period, from $20.7 billion in 2000 to $83.1 billion in 2014. The most rapid growth in the food stamp caseload in recent years has been among able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs). These are work-capable adult recipients...

Illinois and Michigan have traded places on two key metrics for measuring prosperity and opportunity, and both changes are embarrassing for the Land of Lincoln. The first major change came in October 2014, when Michigan surpassed Illinois for total factory jobs. Michigan now has 25,000 more factory jobs than Illinois even though the Wolverine State’s economy is only three-quarters the size of Illinois’. Now, new data from the Department of Human Services shows the embarrassing role reversal has come full turn. In March of this year, Illinois bumped off Michigan to become the Midwest’s No. 1 user of the Supplemental...

In June 2014, there were 46,496,145 recipients of the food stamp program, which is enough to fill the Yankee Stadium 925 times, according to data from the Department of Agriculture (USDA). The Yankee Stadium is equipped to hold 50,291 persons, meaning that the 46,496,145 Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients in June 2014 could fill the stadium 925 times. The number of recipients was up 270,999 since the previous month in May 2014 when there were 46,225,146 individuals participating in the program. Similarly, the number of households participating in the SNAP program has increased as well from the 22,590,393 participating...

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, commonly referred to as food stamps) has seen a meteoric rise in enrollment in the last fifteen years, and especially in the wake of the 2008 recession. The spike in SNAP recipients post-2008 is to be expected - but the maintenance of those high enrollment numbers is an anomaly. American Enterprise Institute scholar Robert Doar testified before the House Committee on Agriculture recently to examine this exact question. Doar notes that changes in the SNAP program that took place during this time period may disincentivize work requirements - and keep SNAP participation among working-age...

Maine’s Republican governor wants all able-bodied recipients of the federal food stamp benefit to complete work or volunteer activities. Gov. Paul LePage announced Wednesday that Maine will no longer seek a federal waiver that allows some able-bodied adults to receive food stamps without working or volunteering. “We must continue to do all that we can to eliminate generational poverty and get people back to work,” LePage said in a statement announcing the change. “We must protect our limited resources for those who are truly in need and who are doing all they can to be self-sufficient.” According to the Maine...

The Worldview that Makes the Underclass Anthony Daniels Writer and Doctor ANTHONY DANIELS, who often writes under the penname Theodore Dalrymple, is the Dietrich Weismann Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Born in London in 1949, he qualified as a doctor in 1974 and has worked in various countries in Africa and elsewhere. From 1990 to 2005, he worked as a doctor and psychiatrist in a prison in Birmingham, England. He has written a column for the London Spectator for 14 years, and writes regularly for National Review and the Wall Street Journal. He...

People participating in the food stamp program outnumbered the women who worked full-time, year-round in the United States in 2012, according to data from the Department of Agriculture and the Census Bureau. In the average month of 2012, according to the Department of Agriculture, there were 46,609,000 people participating in the food stamp program (formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). That contrasts with the 44,059,000 women who worked full-time, year-round in 2012, according to the Census Bureau’s report on Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States. For each woman who worked full-time, year-round in 2012,...

Rep. Barbara Lee is firing back at Bill O’Reilly, saying the Fox News host’s comments about race were “disgusting.” “Unfortunately we’ve come to expect language like ‘welfare queens,’ ‘food stamp president,’ and now ‘race hustlers’ from the right wing and Mr. O’Reilly,” the California Democrat said in a statement Wednesday. “It is disgusting and divisive and should never be accepted in our national discourse.” O’Reilly had Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on his program Tuesday night to discuss controversy over some comments Ryan had made about poverty and inner city culture that he later called “inarticulate.” Ryan’s remarks were seized...

FULL TITLE: Walmart to foot bill for food stamp spending spree fiasco sparked by computer glitch - because they were supposed to stick to $50 limit per customer WalMart will have to pay for hundreds of thousands of dollars of groceries bought by Louisiana food stamp recipients after a computer glitch gave them unlimited funds on their government-issued credit cards. The Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services, which oversees the Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card program in the state, said WalMart could have instituted an emergency $50 limit for each customer, but chose not to - and as a...

Wal-Mart stores in Springhill and Mansfield, La., saw a stampede and a shelf-clearing rush Saturday after a computer glitch for food stamp recipients led to benefit cards allowing unlimited purchases.

Almost four years ago, in June 2009, the US entered into a technical recovery from the Great Recession touched off by the collapse of a decade-long housing bubble. The bubble collapse nearly wiped out the financial sector, thanks to extensive investment in mortgage-backed securities that ended up being nearly worthless as foreclosures swept across the nation like a wildfire. American investors lost trillions in net worth as the stock markets plunged, and the federal government shoveled out trillions more in bailouts, safety-net subsidies, and stimulus programs that promised a soft landing and then a steady recovery based on a more-sound...

SUPPLEMENTAL NUTRITION ASSISTANCE PROGRAM (Data as of February 8, 2013) Fiscal PARTICIPATION BENEFIT AVERAGE MONTHLY BENEFIT Year Persons Households COSTS Per Person Per Household ANNUAL SUMMARY FY 2013 47,622,363 22,980,792 12,815,483,317 134.55 278.83 FY 2012 46,609,072 22,329,713 74,619,830,164 133.41 278.48 FY 2011 44,708,726 21,072,113 71,810,924,022 133.85 283.99 MONTHLY DATA FY 2011 Oct 2010 43,201,052 20,183,177 5,778,329,641 133.75 286.29 Nov 2010 43,596,084 20,404,895 5,810,541,635 133.28 284.76 Dec 2010 44,082,361 20,668,184 5,889,455,566 133.60 284.95 Jan 2011 44,187,874 20,748,799 5,868,238,587 132.80 282.82 Feb 2011 44,199,479 20,791,408 5,889,071,901 133.24 283.25 Mar 2011 44,587,275 21,045,909 5,983,748,199 134.20 284.32 Apr 2011 44,647,781 21,071,176 5,949,614,728 133.26...