The Food Stamp
President? Will record welfare growth be
the Obama Legacy
In 2001 and 2002, six states
adopted rules that eased income and asset requirements for SNAP, the Wall
Street Journal story noted. “Previously, applicants could be disqualified if
they had $5,000 in the bank, or earned slightly more than the poverty
threshold.” The idea was to use
government aid to keep Americans from wiping out their savings.
“Policy makers wanted to
allow newly poor families, such as those where the breadwinner was temporarily
unemployed, to have enough money to put gas in the cars and pay phone bills —
two necessities for finding and retaining jobs,” the article notes.
Well-intentioned? Perhaps.
Costly? Absolutely.
Last year, the federal
government spent $74.6 billion on food stamp benefits, or as the Wall Street
Journal story points out, roughly equivalent to the combined budgets of the Department
of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the Department of the
Interior. Expenditures have grown from $30.4 billion in 2007.
More than $102.67 million in
food assistance benefits was paid out to 854,692 recipients of the program in
January, according to the state Department of Health Services.
Today, thanks in large part
to the encouragement of the Obama administration, 43 states and U.S.
“We believe that increasing
the number of states that implement (eased) eligibility will benefit families
hurt by the economic crisis, promote savings among low income households, and
simplify state policies,” Jessica Shahin, a top USDA official, wrote to other
federal program overseers in 2009, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“Please encourage your States to adopt (the looser rules) to improve SNAP
operations in your States.”
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