Authors of new report warn food donations not enough as six million threatened with worsened hunger

Published on Tuesday, November 26, 2013 by Common Dreams

This Holiday Season, Charity No Match for Food Stamp Cuts

- Sarah Lazare, staff writer

(Photo: Everyday Feminism)'Tis the season to give, the saying goes.
Yet all of the charitable food donations in the United States this year combined would not make a dent in proposed cuts to food subsidy programs that threaten at least six million people with worsened hunger.
So said researchers with the Bread for the World Institute in an interview with The Guardian published Monday.
“Virtually every church, synagogue and mosque in the country is now gathering up food and distributing, and all of that work that food banks do comes to 5% of the food that needy people get,” Bread for the World president Reverend David Beckmann told The Guardian, referencing the organization's recent report Ending Hunger in America. “95% comes from school breakfasts, lunches, food stamps and WIC, so Congress can say 'We can cut this programme 5% per cent – no big deal.' But if you cut the national nutrition programmes 5%, you cancel out everything that the charitable system is doing.”
The comments come as further slashes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are considered in the House, where $39 billion in cuts over the next ten years is up for debate, and the Senate, where a $4 billion slash could be approved. This is in addition to cuts that took effect on November 1 and will amount to $5 billion by the end of the year and $11 billion by 2016. Critics charge that these slashes, which constitute a fraction of the federal budget, will make little difference to tax payers yet devastate the millions who depend on food aid for survival.
Almost half of all people who receive food stamps are children, Forbes reports.
The cuts are under consideration despite 2012 census data, analyzed by the Department of Agriculture, that shows hunger in the United States is stuck at high levels for the fifth year in a row, with 14.5 percent of all U.S. households facing food insecurity in 2012. Poor households, "households with children headed by single women or single men," and African American and Hispanic households hardest hit, according to the USDA.

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Hunger in America

Food Ministry @ Asbury

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Thanksgiving Resolution

Deborah Weinstein

Executive Director, Coalition on Human Needs

Posted: 11/26/2013 5:27 pm

Barbie Izquierdo, a low-income mother of two small children, is a member of Witnesses to Hunger, a Philadelphia group of moms dedicated to ending hunger and poverty for their children and for families nationwide. About a month ago while she was waiting in line at a supermarket, she overheard two families trying to make purchases with their food stamps debit card. A computer glitch had temporarily shut down the system; these families and their children of all ages had to leave the store empty-handed. Barbie had to be a witness again. This problem was fixed in a day, but empty refrigerators when inadequate food stamps run out is a monthly fact of life for millions of poor families. Barbie has been there herself, and she knows it got worse starting November 1, during this month of Thanksgiving, when food stamp cuts of $36 a month for a family of four took effect.
Barbie described this experience during a forum held by Bread for the World this week to release a new report, Ending Hunger in America. The report illuminates that too many people in this country cannot get enough work, and when they do work their pay is too low. The vast majority of people receiving food stamps are children, elderly or the disabled. Two-thirds of the working-aged, non-disabled parents worked while receiving SNAP, and almost ninety percent worked in the year before or after using this aid. But they don't earn enough to be able to afford food.
If people cannot get proper nutrition, their health is compromised. For children, inadequate food can mean developmental delays and falling behind at school. For children and adults, it can mean obesity and diabetes, as families cope with hunger by eating filling foods with empty calories. For seniors, inability to afford healthy foods can make illnesses worse.
Many of us are stocking up on the fixings for a wonderful Thanksgiving. The average cost to serve ten people is just under $50 this year, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. After the recent cut, people receiving food stamps (now called SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) get an average of less than $1.40 per meal. That certainly doesn't buy a Thanksgiving dinner, but it also doesn't provide enough to put food on the table all month long.
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Helping The Homeless  Wikimedia . Org

Author Ed Yourdon from New York City, USA

Homeless woman with dogs ,Haight Street, San Francisco, CA    Wikimedia . Org

Author http://www.flickr.com/photos/livenature/

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DailyFinance

Food Stamps Too Skimpy to Improve Food Security or Diet, Study Finds

by Reuters Nov 25th 2013 2:37PM 

AP/M. Spencer GreenVolunteers at St. Ignatius Food Pantry bag items as individuals and families in need visit the facility in Chicago. Million of low-income Americans who receive food stamps just saw their benefits cut when temporary increase in food stamp dollars from the 2009 economic stimulus expired.

By Andrew M. Seaman

NEW YORK -- A program that provides food and nutrition assistance to millions of low-income Americans may not be effective at current funding levels, suggests a new study.

Researchers found people who received assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) fared no better than people in similar conditions who were not eligible or didn't enroll in the program.

"Our insights were maybe not surprising, but it's the first time something like this has been documented," Eric Rimm told Reuters Health.

Rimm is the study's senior author and an associate professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

SNAP -- formerly known as food stamps -- is the largest U.S. food assistance program and reached approximately 45 million people in 2011, Rimm and his colleagues write in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior. The program is run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

People on SNAP can use benefits to buy most food, but not alcohol, supplements or prepared meals.

Previous studies looking into whether SNAP improves people's access to food and diet quality have produced mixed results.

For their study, the researchers recruited 107 adults who called a hunger helpline in Massachusetts and applied for SNAP.

They then compared food access and diet quality among the 64 people who were able to enroll in the program and the 43 people who did not enroll.

They collected questionnaires from those people over three months in 2011.

The researchers found people's access to food -- or "food security" -- improved a bit among both groups. But neither group did particularly better than the other.

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Who Will Fight for the Nation's Hungry? : Congressional talks will resume on Wednesday over a Farm Bill that has languished without resolution in both chambers since last year.

Published on Wednesday, October 30, 2013 by Common Dreams

As Farm Bill Talks Resume, Who Will Fight for the Nation's Hungry?

Proposals in both the House and Senate would see nutrition assistance to the nation's neediest cut

- Jon Queally, staff writer

A food pantry at the United Methodist Church of Worth in Chicago. (Photo: Phil Velasquez/Chicago Tribune)

And while Republicans have continued to attack the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (or SNAP), which provides food assistance to the nation's poorest families and individuals, the Democrats have played along by proposing less aggressive, but still damaging, levels of cuts to the essential program.
And because the last adjustment to the SNAP program expires at the end of this week, the pain caused by a feuding Congress willing to put hungry children and the elderly in the crosshairs amid an ongoing series of budget battles is about to get very real for some.
As Greg Kaufmann, poverty correspondent for The Nation, writes this week:

This Friday, 48 million people—including more than 21 million children—will see their food stamp (SNAP) benefits reduced. Instead of receiving an average of a buck-fifty for a meal, individuals in need of food assistance will get about $1.40. For families of three, the cut means they will receive $29 less in food stamps every month. [...]
The SNAP cuts come at a time when 49 million people—about 14.5 percent of all US households—are food insecure. That means they don’t have enough money to meet their basic food needs, and don’t necessarily know where their next meal is coming from. The Institute of Medicine already demonstrated the inadequacies of the SNAP allotment for hungry families even before this cut.
What are we to make of this—the timing of the cut, the lack of discussion about it on the Hill, and the fact that it will deliver yet another blow to people who are already among the most vulnerable citizens in our nation?
It all points to the same hard truth we see time and again: when it comes to responding to the struggles of the more than one in three Americans who are living below twice the poverty line—on less than about $36,600 annually for a family of three—we prefer to look the other way.

But as the conference committee comes together Wednesday, as McClatchy reports, deeper cuts seem likely:

The Republican-controlled House passed a bill that would cut food stamps by $39 billion out of a projected $800 billion over 10 years. In addition, the House SNAP provision would require able-bodied adults without children to work or volunteer for 20 hours a week to receive federal assistance.
The Democratic-held Senate’s farm bill also would cut food stamps, but by $4.5 billion over a decade. The Senate plan wouldn’t add work requirements.

As Willy Blackmore, food policy editor as the TakePart.com, writes:

We won't know anytime soon which terrible cut will prevail: the $4 billion cut to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program preferred by the Senate or the $39 billion thrashing of food stamps passed by the House. But one thing is certain: Funding for SNAP will drop starting on Friday, and all recipients will receive fewer benefits.

Among the progressive lawmakers trying to avert the disaster, Rep. Jim McGovern confessed to Blackmore that there were no good legislative options given the current climate in Washington. And because the current elevated funding for SNAP was written with a vague sunset clause when the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (or stimulus) was enacted in 2009, McGovern says those reductions are now an "inevitable reality."
"What we absolutely should not do is make the situation even worse by piling on additional cuts in the context of the farm bill,” he adds. “As a member of the farm bill conference committee, I will fight with every ounce of energy I have to prevent additional cuts from happening.”
For Blackmore, however, Democrats should receive a large portion of the blame the current mess. For not better securing the improved funding for SNAP when they had the chance and because now they have capitulated by agreeing with Republicans that some level of cuts are warranted, he argues a great disservice to the nation's poor has been done.
"The loss of stimulus funding," writes Blackmore, "will amount to a $5 billion reduction in SNAP in 2014, and $6 billion in 2015 and 2016 combined. Congress’s epic $39 billion cut would be spread out over the course of 10 years, if it somehow manages to become law. And that would come on top of this reduction, which is, in essence, a Democrat-approved cut that’s 1/3 of the size of the House’s slash-and-burn approach to SNAP."
Across the country, poverty assistance organizations and food pantries are bracing for the cuts, but in Washington, DC, it remains unclear what powerful voices will take a stand for the nation's hungry and most vulnerable.
As Kaufmann laments, the drive to cut food stamps

all points to the same hard truth we see time and again: when it comes to responding to the struggles of the more than one in three Americans who are living below twice the poverty line—on less than about $36,600 annually for a family of three—we prefer to look the other way. Even as the interests of low-income people and the middle-class converge—for example, the need for good jobs and fair wages, access to continuing education, a more equitable economy where 95 percent of the gains don’t go to the top 1 percent, and a safety net that is available in tough times or when jobs pay lousy wages—we still find that a SNAP cut like this can occur with hardly a whisper of protest (outside of the advocacy community) at a time when hunger is widespread.

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All In with Chris Hayes / MSNBC Economy / Health

 

 

Paul Jones brings bags of onions to restock bins at the Bed-Stuy Campaign Against Hunger food pantry, in Brooklyn, New York.

John Trotter for MSNBC

America’s new hunger crisis

10/30/13 04:00 AM

By Ned Resnikoff

In the 22 years that Swami Durga Das has managed New York’s River Fund Food Pantry, he has never seen hunger like this. Each Saturday, hundreds of hungry people descend on the pantry’s headquarters, an unassuming house on a residential block. The first people arrive around 2 am, forming a line that will wrap around the block before Das even opens his doors.
“Each week there’s new people,” Das told MSNBC.com. “The numbers have just skyrocketed.”
The new clients are diverse—working people, seniors, single mothers—but many of them share something in common: they represent the millions of Americans who fell victim to food insecurity when the Great Recession hit in 2009, but didn’t benefit from the economic recovery.

Photo by John Trotter for MSNBC

People walk in from Fulton Street and register their information in the Bed-Stuy Campaign Against Hunger office.

And the worst may be yet to come.
Food activists expect a “Hunger Cliff” on November 1, when automatic cuts to food stamp benefits will send a deluge of new hungry people to places like the River Fund Food Pantry, which are already strained.
“I thought we were busy now; I don’t know what it will be like then, because all of those people getting cut will definitely be accessing a pantry,” said Das. “It definitely will be a catastrophe.”
Those cuts were never supposed to be catastrophic; instead they were intended to gradually wind food stamp spending back down to normal levels, after boosting them in response to the 2008 financial collapse.
In the aftermath of that collapse, as employment stagnated and poverty increased, food stamp use exploded: From a little over 26 million users in 2007 to almost 47 million in 2012, an increase of 77%. At the same time, the average benefits per person rose from $96.18 to $133.41.
The 2009 stimulus bill raised the cap on food stamp benefits and pumped an additional $45.2 billion into the program over the next several years. But as provisions of the law expire, the program is scheduled to receive a $5 billion cut over the next year alone. Those cuts will reduce monthly benefits for every single food stamp recipient in the country; a family of four will receive $36 less per month, on average.
Billions more in cuts are scheduled to occur in the following two years, despite the fact that food insecurity in America has not even begun to return to pre-recession levels.
“I believe we have a hunger crisis,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, who sits on a House committee responsible for the food stamp program. “When 50 million people in the richest country on the planet are hungry, that’s a crisis.”

Photo by John Trotter for MSNBC

Program Director Tamara Dawson is on her feet all day, arriving at the office before the pantry opens to the public in the morning and staying well past closing.

There’s little sign that McGovern’s colleagues in Congress will step in to stave off the crisis. In fact, some Republicans in Congress are pushing further cuts to the food stamp program as part of broader budget negotiations that could bump an additional 4 million people off of the food stamps rolls by the end of next year.Those cuts may be a political winner for a few politicians, but for people like Winsome Stoner, they could be devastating.
Stoner was among those to start collecting food stamps during the post-crash era. She was unemployed at the time, and her husband’s salary as a security guard was not sufficient to pay the rent and feed their five children. Now working full-time at the Bed-Stuy Coalition Against Hunger food pantry in her neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Stoner still collects $640 per month in food stamps. Even that, combined with her income and her husband’s income, is not enough.
“It does cushion me a bit, it helps,” she said. “But we still run out of food by the end of the month. The middle, sometimes.”
When there’s no more food left, and no more money to buy new groceries, Stoner and her husband go to food pantries. At the Bud-Stuy pantry, the largest emergency food pantry in New York City, Stoner is both an employee and a regular client.
Visiting food pantries is a common practice for those who can’t stretch their food stamp money, also known as SNAP benefits, until the end of the month, according to Lisa Davis, senior vice president of government relations for the national food bank network Feeding America.
“Right now SNAP benefits are not overly generous,” Davis told MSNBC.com. “They average out to be about $1.49 per person per meal, and we know from our food banks that many of the clients coming to them are those who are receiving SNAP, but the benefits aren’t getting them through the entire month.”
For Stoner’s seven-person household, a monthly SNAP benefit of $640 per month translates to about $1 per meal, assuming everyone in the family eats three meals a day. Thanks to the expiration of the stimulus package’s food stamp provisions, Stoner has already received word that she might soon receive even less—and without knowing how big the cut will be, she’s terrified.

Photo by John Trotter for MSNBC

Winsome Stoner stocks the pantry’s refrigerator. Both Stoner and her husband work, but they have to use the food pantry themselves because their incomes don’t cover all their family’s monthly food expenses.

“I don’t know if we’re going to get anything,” she said, her voice rising in agitation. “We’re not sure if we’re on it. I’m really worried, I really am.” “The death knell of the food stamp program”
On the same week that SNAP recipients are expected to lose $5 billion in benefits, members of both chambers of Congress are meeting to negotiate another potentially massive budget cut to the program.
This week, a committee will attempt to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the farm bill. The Senate version includes $4.1 billion in cuts to food stamps over the next decade; the House version includes no language related to food stamps, but House Republicans are expected to insist on including language from a separate House bill, which would slash $39 billion out of program over the course of the next ten years.
If House Republicans get their way and passed a $39 billion cut, it would cause nearly 4 million people to lose SNAP eligibility in 2014 alone, according to projections from the independent Congressional Budget Office. That cut would magnify the effect of the “Hunger Cliff” by orders of magnitude.
“I’m sad to say that we’re constantly putting out fires wherever Republicans try to light them,” said McGovern, D-Mass., a member of the Agriculture Committee and one of Congress’ leading advocates for more robust nutrition programs. As a member of the Farm Bill conference committee, McGovern will be conducting “damage control,” trying to limit the scope of the cuts.
McGovern believes that nutrition policy in the U.S. should be overhauled as part of a plan to end hunger entirely. But instead, “what we’re doing is body blocking this cut and that cut,” he said. Recalling that Barack Obama promised during his first presidential campaign to end child hunger by 2015, McGovern added, “we haven’t done a goddamn thing to do that, to be honest.”

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Food stamps will get cut by $5 billion this week — and more cuts could follow

By Brad Plumer, Published: October 28 at 12:47 pmE-mail the writer

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The U.S. food-stamp program is set to shrink in the months ahead. The only real question is by how much.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) currently costs about $80 billion per year and provides food aid to 14 percent of all U.S. households — some 47 million people. Those numbers swelled dramatically during the recession.

A farmers market in Roseville, Calif. advertises its acceptance of EBT (electronic benefit transfer) cards, which are used for food stamps. (Rich Pedroncelli/AP)

But the food-stamp program is now set to downsize in the weeks ahead. There's a big automatic cut scheduled for Nov. 1, as a temporary boost from the 2009 stimulus bill expires. That change will trim about $5 billion from federal food-stamp spending over the coming year.
And that's not all: The number of Americans on food stamps could drop even further in the months ahead, as Congress and various states contemplate further changes to the program. Here's a rundown:
1) The end of the stimulus boost. First up is a big automatic cut to SNAP scheduled for Nov. 1. This is happening because the food-stamp program was temporarily expanded in 2009 as part of the Recovery Act. That bill spent $45.2 billion to increase monthly benefit levels to around $133, on average.
That bump will end on Friday, and benefits will shrink by around 5 percent on average. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has a short report calculating what this will mean for individual households:

So, for instance: The maximum monthly benefit for a family of four will drop from $668 per month down to $632. The maximum monthly benefit for an individual will drop from $200 per month to $189. ("The cut is equivalent to about 16 meals a month for a family of three based on the cost of the U.S. Agriculture Department’s 'Thrifty Food Plan,' notes CBPP)
Those snips add up: The end of the stimulus program will reduce federal food-stamp spending by $5 billion in 2014. Every state will be affected: California, for instance, will see a $457 million drop in spending over the upcoming year, while Texas will lose $411 million as a result.
2) Congress could cut food stamps even further. The stimulus lapse isn't the only cut on the horizon. This week, the House and Senate will resume their haggling over a five-year farm bill. The main point of contention, as before, is over how much to pare back the food-stamp program.
The Senate approved a farm bill that would make only minor changes to the food-stamp program, saving $4.5 billion over 10 years (compared with current law).
House Republicans, meanwhile, went even further, voting on a bill that would cut $39 billion from the program over 10 years, largely by tightening restrictions on who could qualify for food stamps:

Read More Here

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The middle class in America is being systematically wiped out.

 

The American Dream

 25 Stats That Prove That The American Dream Is Being Systematically Destroyed

By Michael Snyder, on October 24th, 2013

The 25 statistics that you are about to read are solid proof that the middle class in America is being systematically wiped out.  Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world.  It seemed like almost everyone owned a home, had a couple of nice vehicles and could provide a very comfortable lifestyle for their families.  Sadly, that has all changed.  In America today, prices are rising at a very brisk pace but incomes are not.  There aren’t nearly enough jobs for everyone anymore, and most of the jobs that are being “created” are jobs that pay very little.  The largest employer in America is Wal-Mart, and the second largest employer is actually a temp agency (Kelly Services).  In a desperate attempt to make ends meet, millions of American families endlessly pile up more debt, and millions of other American families find themselves forced to turn to the government for help.  At this point, more than 49 percent of all Americans receive benefits from the federal government each month.  The percentage of Americans that cannot financially take care of themselves is rising every single year, and our independence is being whittled away as we become increasingly dependent on the government.  Unfortunately, our politicians continue to stand aside and do nothing as our jobs are shipped overseas, inflation steals our purchasing power and the middle class continues to shrink.  The following are 25 stats that prove that the American Dream is being systematically destroyed…
1. According to the most recent numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau, 49.2 percent of all Americans are receiving benefits from at least one government program.
2. The U.S. government has spent an astounding 3.7 trillion dollars on welfare programs over the past five years.
3. An increasing number of employers are encouraging their low wage employees to supplement their wages by going on government welfare programs.  For example, McDonald’s workers that need help making ends meet are being instructed to go on food stamps…

McDonald’s workers who are unable to pay their bills or stay above the poverty line should find help from food pantries or enlist in government benefit programs instead of seeking higher wages, according to a company resource line meant to help employees.
Nancy Salgado has worked for the fast-food corporation for over 10 years yet still earns $8.25 an hour, barely more than the $7.25 federal minimum wage. With help from the worker’s rights group Low Pay Is Not Ok, she phoned the company’s employee hotline, known as McResource, attempting to find some answers on how to improve her situation.
A recording of the call was made available to CNN, which reported that Salgado asked the helpline operator multiple questions regarding how McDonalds would help her pay her heating bill, buy groceries, and whether she could afford to help pay for her sister’s medical treatment.
Despite never asking how much money Salgado earned per hour or asking how many hours a week she worked, the McDonalds representative said she “definitely should be able to qualify for both food stamps and heating assistance.”

4. Total consumer credit has risen by a whopping 22 percent over the past three years.
5. Student loans are up by an astounding 61 percent over the past three years.
6. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, median household income in the United States has fallen for five years in a row.
7. Right now the middle class is taking home a smaller share of the overall income pie than has ever been recorded before.
8. Ordinary Americans are being priced out of the housing market.  Today, nearly half of all home purchases are all-cash deals.
9. The homeownership rate in the United States is now at the lowest level it has been in nearly 18 years.
10. The gap between the rich and the poor in the United States is at an all-time record high.
11. U.S. families that have a head of household that is under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent.
12. Every single day, thousands of Americans are receiving letters in the mail informing them that their old health insurance policies have been canceled.  According to a recent Kaiser Health News article, some companies have already sent out hundreds of thousands of cancellation notices…
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McDonald's Tells Worker She Should Sign Up For Food Stamps

McDonald's workers struggling to get by on poverty wages should apply for food stamps and Medicaid.
That's the advice one activist McDonald's worker received when she called the company's "McResource Line," a service provided to McDonald's workers who need help with issues like child and health care.
"You can ask about things like food pantries. Are you on SNAP? SNAP is Supplemental Nutritional Assistance [Program] -- food stamps ... You would most likely be eligible for SNAP benefits," a McResource representative told 27-year-old Nancy Salgado, who works at a Chicago McDonald's. "Did you try and get on Medicaid? Medicaid is a federal program. It's health coverage for low income or no income adults -- and children."
Salgado is one of many fast-food workers who have walked off the job in recent months to protest the industry's low wages, part of a nationwide movement aiming to raise pay to $15 an hour. She has worked at McDonald's for 10 years, and earns $8.25 an hour in her current job as a cashier. Earlier this month, Salgado was detained after pressing McDonald's President Jeff Stratton for higher wages.
"Do you think this is fair that I have to be making $8.25 when I've been working at McDonald's for 10 years?" Salgado said during the confrontation.
The audio of Salgado's call to the McResource Line was posted Thursday on YouTube by advocacy group Low Pay Is Not OK. In the call, the McResource representative points the worker towards government assistance when she explains she needs help.






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McOutrage: Poverty Wages For Workers, Corporate Jet for Execs

October 24, 2013

Isaiah J. Poole

Nancy Salgado has been working at McDonald’s in Chicago for 10 years, and for that whole time she has been working at Illinois’ minimum wage, now $8.25 an hour. As a mother with two young children, that puts her below the poverty line of $19,530.

McDonald’s says it can’t afford to pay her and the company’s more than 700,000 other American nonmanagement employees a wage that would lift them above the poverty line. What McDonald’s Corp. can afford to do, though, is buy itself a new corporate jet.

That’s right. Bloomberg News reported earlier this week that McDonald’s Corp. has purchased for the use of its executives a Bombardier Challenger 605, a 12-seat plane that goes for between $27 million and $35 million. (Fries and soft drink not included.)

Meanwhile, Salgado and other McDonald’s employees have been offered a “McResources” telephone help line to call that offers them helpful advice if they are having problems meeting their expenses on their minimum-wage McPaycheck. The advice: Sign up for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (“food stamp”) benefits and Medicaid. This video features the exchange between Salgado and an unidentified respondent on the McResources line.

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