Funding for the federal food stamps will shrink by $5 billion this week, and the pain may not stop there, says the Wonk Blog at The Washington Post.
Brad Plumer writes:
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) currently costs about $80 billion per year and provides food aid to 14 percent of all U.S. households — some 47 million people. Those numbers swelled dramatically during the recession.
But the food-stamp program is now set to downsize in the weeks ahead. There’s a big automatic cut scheduled for Nov. 1, as a temporary boost from the 2009 stimulus bill expires. That change will trim about $5 billion from federal food-stamp spending over the coming year.
And that’s not all: The number of Americans on food stamps could drop even further in the months ahead, as Congress and various states contemplate further changes to the program.
Visit Wonk Blog to get a full picture of the pain that may lie ahead for Americans who depend on this program to feed themselves and their families. Then come back and talk to us about what we as individuals and we are a church should be doing about this situation.
I think I will be running in a holiday 5k to support a local food bank, and while I am glad to do this, it doesn’t seem as though it is a solution to the problem.