Hungry? Broke? Tough luck, nobody cares.
That’s about the long and short of it one would think. Yesterday’s $5 billion cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamp program, has barely made a ripple in the media pond as of yet, though millions of Americans are already wondering how they are going to make it through the holidays. Executive director of the?Florida Association of Food Banks, Rebecca Brislain, told the?News Service of Florida:
That’s… a significant hit for families; we already know SNAP doesn’t last the whole month.
Director of Our Savior Lutheran Food Bank in Lansing, MI, told WILX:
I think we’re going to be swamped and it really worries me. A lot of them have trouble getting by now even with the food stamps. And if they cut it, what are they going to do for food?
The SNAP cuts come just as the weather turns cold, as Thanksgiving and Christmas loom over the country — traditionally a very stressful, emotional time of year for many already. Experts claim it is the first month-to-month benefit decrease in the program’s history. Food banks have been telling local news all across the country that they are worried the cuts will result in greater need at a time when even the food banks are running bare.
The cuts to SNAP will likely affect 47 million, nearly fifteen percent of Americans, or 1 in 7, according to USA Today, and will drop according to household size. They come as a result of a failure on the behalf of Democrats to fulfill their promise to find a means of funding the money the administration borrowed in 2009 for other purposes.
As usual, the most vulnerable populations will be affected by the cuts. Rather than making the obvious cuts from our drastically bloated “Defense” fund, America continues to choose to steal food and education out of the mouths of its children. And if that is how America treats its own children, just imagine the children of the rest of the world!
But nobody cares. It’s evident the media doesn’t. Poor people aren’t news unless they’re doing something crazy, caught in a police chase, in a big drug bust, or shooting up a massacre scene somewhere. It’s got to be sensational tabloid fodder for the elites — a type of slumming — for it to make national attention. We are their National Enquirer, their Globe, their gimp in the closet worth schtooping and gawking at once in a while.
It’s evident nobody cares, also, blatantly, because the Farm Bill is still being batted around thanks to a government that cannot (again!) come together, compromise, and run the affairs of the nation without screeching everything to a costly halt for their own political gain (at the taxpayers’ expense!) The Farm Bill floats into next year because nobody can agree on anything — nothing except cutting SNAP even further, that is. The question is by how many billions of dollars. There, again, our precious two-party system grates the country into a stalemate.
When asked how the cuts will affect them, Lance Worth of Olympia, WA told the Bellingham Herald:
Before the cut, it was kind of an assumption you were going to the food bank anyway. I guess I’m just going to go $20 hungrier — aren’t I?
Lupe Gonzalez of Bakersfield, CA told Eyewitness News:
It means a lot to me, because it’s hard, it’s hard what I get, it’s not enough for my kids. I’m telling you, by the end of the month there’s nothing … rice and beans, whatever we can afford.
Sarah Willea of Muskegon, MI, told Liberal America:
I understand that money has to be taken from somewhere, it’s just crazy that they cut food stamps this much for everyone when they spend so frivolously elsewhere.
Military.com reported nearly a million veterans, as well as thousands still in active duty, would be affected by the SNAP cuts, as well. Rather than being critical of government and chastising the lack of support and consideration shown American troops, Military.com claimed “a Defense Department spokesman told the site active duty members receiving SNAP tend to be in junior pay grades with larger-than-average households.”
Executive director of the National Military Families Association, Joye Raezer, framed it as such:
It’s a small population but it’s a vulnerable population.
Two things are certain. First, Americans are broke, worried, and wary of the future when it comes to stability and security. Second, whether good or bad according to the Right or Left, more cuts are coming to SNAP — bigger, deeper cuts. The only questions remaining are when and how much.
Considering how tight the pantries are running around the country, one would do well to start digging into gardening, the Transition movement, canning, and start reading up on all the James and Grace Lee Boggs one can get hold of … Detroit will show us all the way.
Even Sesame Street understands how big this issue is.
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