Food Stamps Swell as Economy Improves

[Acid Trip]

Great job Democrats. Let's make getting on SNAP as easy as possible so more people rely on the government tit.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/...es_712078.html

In an article titled, "Use of Food Stamps Swells Even as Economy Improves," the Wall Street Journal reports that "The financial crisis is over and the recession ended in 2009. But one of the federal government's biggest social welfare programs, which expanded when the economy convulsed, isn't shrinking back alongside the recovery."

The report continues, "Enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, as the modern-day food-stamp benefit is known, has soared 70% since 2008 to a record 47.8 million as of December 2012. Congressional budget analysts think participation will rise again this year and dip only slightly in coming years."

The biggest factor behind the upward march of food stamps is a sluggish job market and a rising poverty rate. At the same time, many states have pushed to get more people to apply for SNAP, a program where the federal government picks up the tab.

But there is another driver, which has its origins in President Bill Clinton's 1996 welfare overhaul. In recent years, the law has enabled states to ease asset and income tests for would-be participants, with the encouragement of the Obama administration, allowing into the program people with relatively higher incomes as well as savings.

The new rules were designed to encourage people to take advantage of the program before they became destitute. By expanding the pool of potential applicants, they are redrawing the landscape of government assistance. It is one reason why SNAP appears to have evolved from a program that rose and fell with the unemployment rate to a more permanent feature of the landscape.

[perrhaps]

I want me some!

[FBD]

if we didnt have those cards and this were decades ago, we'd be seeing the food lines.

[lost in melb.]

So what does one of these food stamps get ya??

[RBP]

if we didnt have those cards and this were decades ago, we'd be seeing the food lines.

So you're arguing in favor of expanded SNAP?

So what does one of these food stamps get ya??

It's a government issued debit card you use for food purchases, if that answers your question.

[Acid Trip]

So you're arguing in favor of expanded SNAP?

That's not what he's arguing.

He knows that if we had food lines people would be rioting and demanding change. SNAP is the governments way of pacifying the hungry and angry. After all, the hungrier you are the angrier you get.

If SNAP didn't exist you'd see radical changes in this country.