Food Stamp Nation

Thank you for cspan.  Today's stats for the food stamp program (known as SNAP - Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program):

In 2013:  $70 billion annually spent on food stamps, serving 47 million people
In 2008:  $35 billion annually spent on food stamps, serving 22 million people

How can this be considered any kind of recovery, when twice as many people are dependent on the government for their very life sustenance, food for them and their families ?

Part of the Farm Bill, food stamps is (in Yoda speak).  Why is that?  Well, you have agriculture subsidies, agriculture policies, and the part of USDA that deals with food stamps too, the Food & Nutrition Service.  So this way the Farm Bill has something for everyone - handouts for farmers in farm states, and food stamp transfer payments for inner city ghetto dwellers.  The red and blue beasts of the U.S. Congress all get to go home to the pride and tell their constituents they have brought home the slaughtered buffalo (ok borrowing from the nature show that was just on public television.  My husband found that scene disturbing, but I was racking my brain trying to find an analogy to my workplace - it will come to me).

In a symbolic gesture that no doubt has been tried with every Farm Bill, Senator Inhofe proposed legislation that would turn SNAP into a state block grant program.  Well yes, I've heard that before.  Back in the early 1980s when I worked for the FNS as a QC reviewer, yep the topic came up back then - enter into the Reagan era.

Another part of the Farm Bill is the commodity food program.  My short stint at another non-lucrative profession working at the Century High School kitchen saw this up close.  Large (free!) batches of commodity chicken nuggets, cheese, and other commodities.  So the U.S. government pays for these excesses, which in turn are distributed to schools.

OK back to food stamps.  I am more than disheartened that the food stamp rate is so high.  The answer is not "family wage jobs" or "higher minimum wage" or "lets feed the kids breakfast every day too".  The answer is not more dependency on the government.

The answer might be victory gardens that each kid, each family, can cultivate.  Each community.  Each food stamp card should be given with a garden tool and a packet of seeds.

I have always thought it would be better to hand out sacks of rice and beans than food stamp cards.  But I suppose anything can be turned into a trading currency - hey, I'll sell you these 3 bags of rice for that bag of cocaine.  But that is a subject for another day.