Food stamp enrollment jumps to record 31.8 million

[Liberal_in_LA]

Food stamp enrollment jumps to record 31.8 million
Thu Mar 5, 2009 3:34pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A record 31.8 million Americans received food stamps at the latest count, an increase of 700,000 people in one month with the United States in recession, government figures showed on Thursday.

Food stamps, which help poor people buy groceries, are the major U.S. anti-hunger program, forecast to cost at least $51 billion in this fiscal year ending September 30, up $10 billion from fiscal 2008.

"A weakened economy means that many more individuals are turning to SNAP/food stamps," said the Food Research and Action Center. Last summer food stamps were renamed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

The average food stamp benefit is $115 a month for individuals and $255 a month per household.

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE52478R20090305

[stumblnrose]

1. I am on food stamps

I suffered medical trauma with around a million in costs. Most covered by insurance but still waiting for United Health Care to reimburse me for money I spent 2 years ago. I'm sorry but I don't know how to live on the $150 bucks I get for food. Especially since I used to eat a very organic and somewhat expensive diet. How much mackerel and pasta can one man eat? And the churches give you white bread and peanut butter.

[napoleon_in_rags]

2. I'm sorry to hear that.

That answer for many in these times seems to be to get local. In my town we've put together local food coops with cheap organic produce, mostly from local growers. The irony for many are that the resources for cheap organic food (lawns that could be grown in) are all around us, yet wasting water on grass seems so much more important.

Here's a good Borscht recipe.
http://www.cooksrecipes.com/soup/russian-vegetarian-borscht-recipe.html
Leave out the parsnips and bay leaf. substitute broth for bullion cube to do it really cheap. I live off this stuff.

edit: Oh, and forget about the dutch oven. Just saute it in the pot you will make the soup in.

[silverojo]

4. It was even worse for our family

My aunt had a terminal illness, unable to work after working 2 full-time jobs most of her life. She was a heart patient who had to be on a very strict diet because, for instance, sodium would make her lungs fill with fluid, making it hard for her to breathe.

But because she'd worked so hard, her Social Security check was about $25 too high for her to even qualify for food stamps. And you can hardly find heart-healthy food at a food bank, y'know? :(

My mother and I also had financial problems because of my disability (prevented me from working, but not an "official" disability that qualified me for disability payments).

The only way we survived was to pool our money, what little we had, so the three of us could survive.

Let's just say that Mom and I lost a lot of weight during that time. Pretty sick state of affairs in this country, when people are forced to eat substandard amounts of food, in a desperate attempt to keep a terminally-ill person eating well.

Every Republican in this nation needs to go through that experience, to understand what's REALLY happening in this country.

[w4rma]

3. ~10% of all Americans. (nt)

[LynnTheDem]

5. That's 31.8 million Americans the Republican Party wants to cut food stamps from.

Not a Party anyone with any humanity would want to vote for.

FOXNews.com - GOPers Want to Cut Food, Conservation Programs

Republicans in Congress have proposed reducing food programs for the poor by $574 million...

Leading Republicans indicated this year they would rather target food stamps and conservation programs than simply make the deep cuts that Bush was seeking.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,171379,00.html

On a party-line vote, a Republican-run U.S. House of Representatives committee voted to cut food stamps by $844 million on Friday, just hours after a new U.S. Agriculture Department report showed more Americans are struggling to put food on the table.
http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/288028/house_panel_votes_844_mln_cut_in_food_stamps/