Take a look at what President Biden plans to announce today:
Normally, SNAP benefits¹ go up during recessions and then fall back to their normal level afterward. Under Biden's plan, benefits will remain at a higher level permanently.
How did this happen? In 2018 Congress passed a law directing the USDA to review the minimum requirements for a healthy diet. They finished their review this year, and the result was a diet that cost more. Republicans are complaining that they thought they were voting for revenue neutrality back in 2018, but it's too late for that now. The review is finished and Biden has all the authority he needs to implement its recommendations.
It's worth noting that the average benefit in the chart above is per person. Under the new plan a family of four will receive an average benefit of about $600 per month and a maximum benefit of $835.
Is this increase a big deal? Not to you and me, probably, but to someone who's already eating only six days a week because that's all they can afford it sure is.
¹Otherwise known as food stamps.
This is yet another wonderful step toward lifting families out of poverty, to say nothing about the health and other benefits of better nutrition.
(Of course, if Republicans regain total power at the national level they will quickly move to immiserate again just as many people as they possibly can.)
Is it a given the extra money will go towards healthier foods?
https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/eligible-food-items lists several categories of what is eligible. Among them is “Other foods such as snack foods and non-alcoholic beverages” which is admittedly a pretty broad description. I assume there would be a further description somewhere but I haven’t found it yet.
It's the usual statistical outcome. Published studies say that most of the SNAP benefits go to healthy, nourishing food. Certainly, some of the SNAP benefits will be used to buy junk food, but probably not very much. Nor, contrary to RWNJ stereotypes, will many sirloin steaks be bought with SNAP benefits, though no doubt there will be a few of those, too.
I’d rather the odd steak than bags of potato chips and soda.
From the viewpoint of a person with a sufficient food budget, "junk food" is something to be consumed in limited quantities. From the viewpoint of a person who doesn't get enough to eat and may have very limited cooking facilities, something like a bag of chips that are 35% fat and 60% carbohydrates is cheap calories that they need more of. Further, I'm not going to get all sniffy if a poor person manages to squeeze a few little luxuries out of their government support.
Obviously, it's not good for anyone to live on chips and pop, but especially if you're buying the cheap generic brands they're a reasonable part of an economical food budget.
What about lobster?
Well, clearly not. Lots of these folks live in "food deserts" where fresh fruits and vegs are either totally unknown, or have prohibitive costs. But, I guess on the plus side to those who are concerned that poor families might eat luxuriously, there are also no "sirloin steaks", just greasy high-fat hamburger.
Irrelevant. Nobody's going to force people to eat certain foods. What we are trying to do is keep people from going hungry.
Yup, some shaping can be in there, but people gotta make their own choices.
It's a better move than the one in Afghanistan.
I wonder if Mark Belling, best by the consequences of his stroke, will be able to make a surprise appearance at his old WISN-AM stomping grounds to croak out a rendition of his early Obama years hit, "Swipe dat EBT".
Maybe it will even make it to Buck Sexton & KKKlay Travis's WhitePowerHour that is the successor to El Rushbo, for whom Belling used to serve as primary fillin.
Impressive $600 a month is actually enough for a family a four to eat securely.
Source: I am in a family of four we our average grocery bill is $554 a month.
That is impressive. I would like to know how you do it. Most people can't get by on a healthy food budget of $150/month or $37.50 a week.
What does $37.50 have to do with anything? It's $150 a week/$600 a month.
Anyhow for that $150 you buy Aldi and don't buy fun stuff. That's it. Granted we have little kids and not teens so that may change.
Oh i see. The chart (which I skipped over) shows 150 a month but Drum wrote $600 a month. Either way talking about $37.50 has nothing to do with anything I said which was premised on $600 a month.
$150/month for one person is $37.50/week. That is not easy. As I said, I was impressed that someone was doing it.
To do that, you have to be a skilled cook with an adequately equipped kitchen including enough refrigerator/freezer space to store the food that you buy in quantity when it's on sale. There aren't a lot of people who qualify for SNAP who have both the kitchen and the skills required.
My late mother grew up in the Depression in a family that was poor even by Depression standards. By the time I came along, my father was out of university and making a reasonable living, which meant he could provide my mother with a good kitchen and a deep freeze that allowed her to fully exercise her food-budgeting talents. She could probably have beaten even Special Newb's food budget, but again she couldn't do it without the proper equipment.
Eggs are cheap and easy to cook, that's your breakfast. Make sandwiches ahead of time and take to work and school. Cook a nice dinner for four with plenty of rice or potatoes and vegetables. It's surprising Joe inexpensive that can be, and it's how I grew up. Getting fast food was a luxury, going to a restaurant a rarer luxury, but we did do pizza every Friday night when we kids got older, love my folks for that.
We also had cereal for breakfast to eat as well, my mom insisted on no sugar cereals so two choices were Product 19 (corn) and Total (wheat). And there were bananas and raisins to add respectively.
And we had sugar of course too which we liberally added lol.
Where's Reagan now that there is going to be an epidemic of welfare queens buying junk food with food stamps and vodka with the cash they saved?
Tragically - the GOP, using 50 votes/reconciliation can reverse this increase and use the savings (yes the CBO would score this as a savings) to every American an AR15 or something equally questionable.
Good news, I've never understood how people can be so cranky and stingy over food assistance. The real concern is if you don't proved enough assistance, or target it appropriately, will it all be spent on the cheapest processed food, which could lead to poorer health and learning outcomes?
Just make a budget to eat on $38 a week. That is about $5.50 a day. Beans, rice, potatoes, pasta.(Watch out, diabetics). Some ground beef, onions, canned veggies. Cereal, milk. If your fridge or stove don't work, or your power was cut off, or you're working 2 jobs and don't have time or energy to cook, then you go for frozen chicken nuggets and fries. (Watch out coronary patients). And if you are in a food desert, take a bus or uber to a store (more money) or settle for what is at the corner store. Duh. Of course a good portion will be spent on cheap, processed food, or less healthy foods. This is a good step, but not the solution.
You can't make people eat what you want them to eat. First step is make it so they don't have to go hungry. After that, Michelle Obama had the right idea: Educate the young about what makes good nutrition, and what are the benefits thereof. Some will never change, and the food industry will help them remain set in their ways, but in several generations we might see some progress.
Well said
Educate the young?
What has that gotten us in the past? Well let's see
We are the bread basket to the world but in order to do that we have to use gobs of fertilizer, genetically enhanced seeds and we over work the topsoil. Not to mention the water that is in critical shortage now
Then we have meat processing ! Wow. We breed the fastest growing males with the fastest more fertile females then feed their young genetically engineered food guarantied to build a strong body in 12 ways
And of course, along the way we use millions of gallons of gasoline to run the tractors and harvesters to condition the soil, plant the crops, tend the crops, harvest the crops and ship the crops so they can be stored in a atmosphere controlled by computer so that the right mixture of oxygen and nitrogen are in the storage container so as to stop the spoiling process of the harvest.
But we'll slap a "natural" label on the product and call it a day while we feed the world
Meanwhile the co-ops and nature lovers want to return to the 1800s in a grow your own movement.
I think we might need to keep the future generations stupid 'cause we sure have them thinking we're doing things right - now.
Yeah, but it's fixed now. No more recession boosts.
“Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn't. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you.”
― George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier