On Thursday Sept. 19, 2013, the House passed the Nutrition Reform and Work Opportunity Act of 2013, also known as H.R. 3102. The act would cut nearly $40 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and almost 14 million low-income Americans would have their benefits limited or cut entirely starting on Nov. 1.
The Recovery Act of 2009 increased the SNAP budget by 13.6 percent, which amounted to about $80 billion in 2012. Last June, the 2013 Farm Bill, which called for a $20 billion cut of these benefits, failed to pass in the House. Republicans responded by isolating the SNAP reform bill and passing it with almost double the program cuts and not a single Democratic vote.
Republicans claim these cuts will fix the inefficiencies of SNAP, and prevent abuses of the welfare system. Proponents of the cuts point to so-called “Welfare Queens”, claiming that hoarding government transfers inevitably results from SNAP benefits. These claims completely miss the reality of living on SNAP benefits.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, close to two-thirds of SNAP beneficiaries are children, elderly, or disabled. Though there may be a handful of people subverting the system, for the majority of beneficiaries a $29 cut in benefits per day for a family of three has a signifigant impact on their quality of life.In 2014 beneficiaries will recieve an average of $1.40 per person per meal. This is not an acceptable standard for our welfare system. The first priority of the government should not be decimating the benefits of millions of low-income workers.
Moving forward, policy-makers must be cognizant of not only the quantity of welfare, but also the quality of the benefits they provide. SNAP in its present state fails to meet the needs of recipients, especially in terms of nutrition. SNAP places few limits on the food stuffs recipients can use their benefits to purchase, and many people opt for cheap, processed foods. The Center for Science in the Public Interest reported that SNAP users spend an average of $4 billion a year on soda. Ideally, SNAP could be used as a tool to support healthier lifestyles, but this goal cannot be achieved with the sweeping funding cuts specified by the act passed last Thursday.
With this decision, the House has abandoned the needs of low-income Americans. The burden now lies on the Senate to uphold its mandate to provide for the general welfare and reject H.R. 3102.
Is the SNAP budget actually going to be cut–or is its growth going to be reduced?
this government is out of there minds and the people need snap to survive if we live in a city that all the jobs are minimum wage we cant afford to live nevermind buy food its greed its greed and did i mention its greed these government workers have no problem with this because there getting paid an extreme amount of money all we can do is pray and hope that these people can live a day in our shoes and see how they survive lord help them everyone of them when we work everyday and take care of our children and there probably worried about there bonus check so they can vaca in bora bora seriously i pray for you and hope that god will help you people think about it like this if you cant put food on the table and you work everyday to pay the bills just making it barely nevermind the gas prices how would you feelif your child says daddy im hungry or mommy really get a grip and stop thinking about yourselves its just plain selfish
and also they can give 47 million dollars to research the sea but cant help people that live in a city where there is no other way you work to survive but i guess the sea is more important