What are the justifications for cutting SNAP? So far I’ve only seen a few liberal sites whine about the House voting to reduce SNAP benefits. What are some good reasons to reduce SNAP coverage?
There really isn’t any plan to cut SNAP. If you look at average funding for SNAP over the past 10 years, both the Democratic and Republican bills propose a large increase for the next ten years, as usual. The Democratic bill proposes a slightly larger increase than the Republican bill, as usual. The Democrats are therefore claiming that the Republicans want to “cut” funding from SNAP, even though, with regards to the long term trend, the Republicans actually are trying to increase funding for SNAP.
The use of the word “whine” tips your hand perhaps a bit early.
The same as reducing any government program - the fact that US federal government’s spending outstrips its revenues by a huge margin - that is, US government revenues are on the order of $2.2T vs. spending of 3.8T.
If you know that the need for a program, and the demand for that program, is virtually certain to increase, then trimming that increase functions as a “cut”. The distinction is purely semantic.
Why not vote for the increases proportional to the expected need, and if that need should not arise, praise the Goddess, then we can revoke those increases?
SNAP is going to get cut automatically. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act boosted it to 15% above Agriculture’s “Thrifty Food Program” rate. That boost ends at the end of the year.
They shouldn’t reduce it more. People get as low as $75-100 a month to pay for food. If you are lucky, you’ll get $150 a month. Even if you have something like 29 hours a week at McDonalds, your benefits are reduced fairly aggressively.
If you have kids, you can get additional resources via WIC, but the SNAP program by itself is already a fairly insufficient payout.
Bootstraps! If you can’t pull yourself up by them, eat them! Leather is beef!
Please, don’t. Really. Just…don’t.
Oh, they won’t *really *say that, its too crazy and cruel! Nah, no way. Nope. Really, I’m sure. Pretty sure. Sorta kinda.
So can we get a real answer, I’m curious about this. Are SNAP benefits actually being cut from current levels or is the GOP plan just a reduction in the amount of the increase that had previously been planned? We can quibble that it’s semantics, but at the same time it’s very much not fair to say the GOP is cutting SNAP benefits if they are actually voting to increase them. People who receive these benefits understand cuts to mean “my monthly benefit is going down in dollar amount from what it is now, or maybe going away entirely.”
That being said, the justification I’ve heard on the news outlets where they have people from both sides squaring off is that the proposed GOP legislation would increase “fraud prevention” and cut out “loopholes” where people who are, for example, major lottery winners (as an example of someone with perhaps low income but huge assets) continuing to receive SNAP benefits.
From what I can tell the reality is mostly that it’s being done to satisfy the baying for blood from the far right Tea Party types and really makes the party as a whole look bad. A left-leaning commentator said something on the issue I really agreed with, basically “I’m all for doing more to limit fraud in SNAP or look into situations where it doesn’t make sense for certain people who are actually wealthy to be eligible to receive the benefits. But I think if we’re going to get serious about stuff like this let’s first look into all the fraud and waste in DoD procurement.”
And that did hit home for me, because the DoD has a much larger budget than the entire SNAP system or even the entirety of DHHR and just based on “tip of the iceberg” stories we know there are horrific inefficiencies and waste in how the DoD spends money and insane fraud in the procurement process. You get much more bang for your book auditing and trying to reform that process than you do doing the same thing for a much smaller program.
Yes. The American Recovery and Reinvestment act added 15% to the benefit payout. This benefit increase expires at the end of this year. This has been the case since the increase went into effect and no legislative bill has even been proposed (that I’m aware of) to lengthen the duration or make it permanent.
Yes, the GOP’s plan doesn’t fund it as much as the Democrat’s plan.
To be fair both ways, if your choice is between an increase that matches inflation, and an increase that is less than inflation, the option that is less than inflation is going to represent a cut in utility, regardless of what happens to the actual dollar amount.
Maybe they realize that “need” and “demand” are not necessarily the same thing?
These are our people, yes? If they are not our people, who’s people are they?
Who? What? “our people”?
Seriously? You need that idea explained to you? Alas.
It’s a shame. For all the GOP bluster about fraud and waste in aid to the poor, SNAP is among the least subject to fraud and waste. What’s more, it’s also regarded as among the most efficient and effective.
But it’s obvious why they choose SNAP and not something else. Just spend an hour in the comments section of an article on SNAP in any right-leaning news site.
How about you do that and get back to us? You seem like a fairly bright fellow, I’m confident we can trust your reporting.
But he who does not work shall not eat. It’s so deeply engrained into our culture. Even John Smith, one of the first European migrants, said, he who does not work shall not eat.
Even John Smith! My goodness.