One Million Americans Are About to Lose Their Food Stamp Benefits

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/one-million-americans-are-about-lose-their-food-stamp-benefits



One million of the nation’s poorest people will be cut from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNAP) program by the end of 2016 even if they're actively pursuing work, according to Center of Budget Policy and Priorities.

Better known by its former name, the Food Stamp program, in some areas SNAP will reinstate a three-month limit on benefits for unemployed adults between 18-50 who are not disabled or raising children. These individuals will lose SNAP even if they unable to find jobs and not part of job training programs that meet the requirements for food assistance benefits. Many states do not have such programs.

Since the 2008 Bush recession, states were given a waiver that allowed them to offer SNAP benefits for longer periods of time to individuals who had fallen on hard times. Federal welfare laws enacted in 1996 had limited benefits for these individuals to three months of any 36-month period when they aren’t employed or in a work or in a job training program. In the past several years, the three-month limit hasn’t been in effect in most states.

But with unemployment falling to 5.8 percent the waivers will disappear from the 40 states where they're still in effect, leaving those still struggling to find work without food assistance benefits.

[UglyGreed]

1. Funny how this country

pretends to care for the well being of the citizens when there is a call to go to war yet we allow many to go hungry and allow them to live in the streets. Guess there is no money in being compassionate.....

[Enthusiast]

4. Spending money on the general welfare makes people lazy!

"Moochers!", Fox "News" said.

[jeff47]

15. Yay Third Way!!!

Good thing Clinton ended welfare as we know it! There'll never be any negative repercussions of that!

And events like this will have utterly no effect on the 2016 elections.

[SomethingFishy]

20. Yeah, it's also "funny" how groups like Wounded Warrior Project

have to go on TV and beg for money to take care of those troops that Republicans claim are so important to our freedom, yet had the unmitigated gall to get wounded in combat and then expected to be taken care of.

There is plenty of fucking money to go around, just not for us.

[Demeter]

2. Do the PTB REALLY want a revolution?

Because that's what they keep doing...pushing people, boxing them in, leaving no alternative.

[barbtries]

3. i don't think they want one

but they do think it will never happen. they're wrong. just my opinion. eventually the people will recognize that the real power lies with them, and they will rise.

[Enthusiast]

5. They do.

They already know our names and where we live. Millions can be killed or disarmed in a matter of days.

[HereSince1628]

6. Do you think they'd bother actually targeting the rebellious?

Intimidation of society doesn't require anything like apprehension of real dissidents.

WHy couldn't they just sweep up a bunch of people from a random neighborhood and get Fox to put out video of other people waiving flags as bus-loads are carted away?

Soon after, I would expect "good citizens" would take advantage of the notion to purge by reporting any neighbor with whom they have a grudge.

[Enthusiast]

9. The potential for abuse by this government is off the charts due to the Patriot Act.

They sure named that one right, lol.

[HereSince1628]

10. One of the things we must face is the SA, the Stasi, etc

are -all- mostly rational responses of human nature.

We are one species. Within the fuzzy limits imposed by individual variation, we are all essentially the same.

Consequently, all societies have within them the capacity to react in such a manner, all they need is leaders who can impose a perspective that members of society are the enemy.

This isn't news to anyone, of course. Ben Franklin acknowledged it nicely...liberty and security are competing goals. We can't have surplus of one without shortage in the other.

[Enthusiast]

12. Excellent post! It might not be news to anyone but we could use a constant reminder.

What I cannot fathom is the end game. What is the purpose of this madness?

[rurallib]

7. they divide us into silos and have us fight each other for lesser resources

and while they stir the pot and they steal us blind.
Worked for a long time in the good old USA

[lovemydog]

8. I agree.

People on these benefits aren't lazy. Many of them need it to keep living. Or from going crazy. So sad. We have more than enough wealth to provide a few hundred dollars a month for food, to people who desperately need it.

[rurallib]

17. what is really sad is that people who are affected will still vote Republican

because of some other single issue.
Good grief if folks could get by their love of whatever (guns, jesus, whites, etc.) and join together to fight for economic justice. But those on the right have using and refining this strategy not for years or decades, but for CENTURIES.

[lovemydog]

18. Yes. It's the 'you are better than those ________

(fill in the blank). Keeps people from revolting against the biggest criminals - the one percent in this country who own 50% of the wealth and then whine about their taxes being too high. As Chris Rock recently said, if most people knew how much wealth they actually have, there would be revolt in the streets. We can create any government me want. It saddens me that so many Americans just want to spend their money on more military. Not for anything else.

[jeff47]

16. Just like the French and Russian nobility

they believe that the poor would never dare to rise up against them. Besides, they slightly elevated a few poor people and gave them the power to keep order.

It works. Until it doesn't. And the failure is sudden, dramatic, and deadly to the nobility.

[marions ghost]

11. Can we not tell who is in need of help and who is not?

This is outrageous.

[L0oniX]

13. This is a direct attack on the homeless population of which many are unemployable.

[Johonny]

14. I'm sure the new more Christian congress will jump right on this

after all they can't wait to tell us how moral they all are...

[lovemydog]

19. Yup. And I was just thinking they say 'get help from your church.'

Or, 'there's pie in the sky when you die.'

[MoonRiver]

21. I now understand the Rethuglican strategy for winning elections!

Keep people so weak with hunger that they can't make it to the polls.