USA Today: New breed of American emerges in need of food

[marmar]

New breed of American emerges in need of food
The latest government data for 2006 show that 10.9% of households were "food insecure."


By Richard Wolf, USA TODAY

Philomena Gist understands why it hurts so much to be on food stamps. After all, she's got a master's degree in psychology.

"There's pride in being able to take care of yourself," says the Columbus, Ohio, resident, laid off last year from a mortgage company and living on workers' compensation benefits while recovering from surgery. "I'm not supposed to be in this condition."

Neither are many of the 27.5 million Americans relying on government aid to keep food on their tables amid unemployment and rising prices. Average enrollment in the food stamps program has surpassed the record set in 1994, though the percentage of Americans on food stamps is still lower than records set in 1993-95. The numbers continue to climb.

Gist, 51, is the new face of hunger in the USA. She says she spent most of her adult life working as a mental health counselor before deciding to try real estate. "I'm a professional person," she says.

As economists nationally debate whether the country is in recession and policymakers discuss ways to drive down gas prices, a new category of Americans combats hunger.

Since 2006, soaring food and fuel prices have combined with lost jobs and stagnant wages to boost the number of Americans needing food aid. More than 41% of those on food stamps came from working families in 2006, up from 30% a decade earlier, according to the latest Agriculture Department data. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-05-18-foodstamps_N.htm

[Binka]

1. The Bush Mafia Strikes To The Bone

This is fucking insane. Criminal's have high jacked the USA.

[bdamomma]

7. they need to be bodily removed or they will just keep on pushing

their PNAC agenda on all of us, and it seems like they are achieving their goals cause no one is stopping them including us.

[fight4my3sons]

2. many people have read my posts before

My husband works 20 hrs overtime every week. He has a college degree. Works in a school with adolescent kids who are classified emotionally disturbed. Then for overtime he works in the admitting unit (residential part). I have a masters degree in education (special ed). I am currently home with our twins (turning 4yrs old in two weeks) and our oldest is in kindergarten. Childcare costs too much and would eat up too much of my income, so we thought it best for me to stay home until the kids were in school (2009-2010 school year). Even with the overtime we qualify for food stamps, supplemental medicaid (we get insurance through my husband's job), LIHEAP, and WIC.

We will hear in the next two days if my husband has gotten the job that he has been interviewing for the past few weeks. Though we are very thankful for the help we get we will be more than happy to make the call to tell the worker we are over-income if he gets the job.

[My Good Babushka]

5. Best of Luck

I hope you are able to make that call! My husband worked for a successful mutual fund company for eight years and we still qualified for WIC. We never applied, though, until this year, when he lost his job to "restructuring". Now it's food stamps, unemployment comp. and WIC for us. I am home with my two little boys, ages 1 and 4, for the same reason you are. We also agreed early on that if we had children, we would take care of them at home. Now I'm a bit up the creek, because I had to defer my student loans. If I start working, I will need to finance childcare, Sallie Mae will take her 15%, and they will cut our food stamps. It's exasperating to be so stuck!

[glowing]

6. I've had to post pone children.. if I had to take a leave right now.. we'd

lose everything... I've already lost my credit standing.. Hope really is all a lot of us have left.

[fight4my3sons]

8. I know..

I've been on deferral, forbearance you name it. Sallie Mae must love me :eyes: at least my husband doesn't have any student loans. His ex-girlfriend's parents paid for his college. Long story...
They are great people.

The thing that is really weird is that my husband was interviewing for a job at DHHS and he kept worrying that he was going to run into our worker! He was interviewing in a different department. Talk about stress, poor guy.

Thanks for your well wishes. :hi:

[glowing]

3. food insecurity.. new word for Hunger.. asshats

[Frustratedlady]

4. We had a large article about Community Action seeing new people...

they have never had before who are at the threshold of having their utilities shut off and can't stretch their money for food until the end of the month. On the other end of the spectrum, they had been in trouble with their food supplies, but the USPS mail carriers filled that need recently with their annual pick up while on their routes. However, at this rate of new families needing assistance, that food will soon be gone.

[flashl]

9. We need a BIGGER weapon ...

It's the largest weapon in the U.S. government's 15-program food aid arsenal, which now costs about $60 billion, up 76% since 2001. "We do have a strong safety net available to help families in times of economic distress," says Kate Houston, deputy undersecretary for food, nutrition and consumer services at the Department of Agriculture.

In times of economic distress? Why there's been a 'net' under military families since 2001?

Under the National Defense Authorization Act, beginning in May 2001, qualifying military service members could receive up to $500 a month with the then new family subsistence supplemental allowance (FSSA).

Americans who following the rules but still need a 'net'

College degree may not be enough to protect against poverty

April 2007

A rise in college attendance coupled with downsizing, outsourcing and a shortage of high-paying jobs is bolstering the ranks of the educated poor, people with college degrees who don't earn above the national poverty line, economists said.
...
According to recent U.S. Census estimates, the number of college graduates earning below the poverty line has more than doubled in the past 15 years to almost 6 million people.
...
Jared Bernstein, a senior economist with the Economic Policy Institute, said about 16 percent of U.S. college graduates are working jobs that don't require a degree.

Yet, Congress requires each of us to pay an additional $320 to subsidize agribusiness, no net for them.

A cornucopia for rich farmers

Farm subsidies will cost each US household about $320, the price to please agribusiness.

What can $100 million buy you in Congress? If you're agribusiness, such money spent this past year on lobbying and campaign donations will harvest billions in farm subsidies and keep you in clover for another five years.

Congress plans to renew the US agriculture law this week with no apologies for that fact that most of the subsidies will go to the wealthiest 10 percent of recipients and that a majority of this largess will enrich commercial farmers with an average income of $200,000.

...

All this for a "temporary" law born during the Dust Bowl of the Depression to help only the poorest family farmers. If anything, regular renewal of the federal government's largest corporate-welfare scheme has only squeezed out family farms by favoring big commercial ones.