“Nearly one in seven American households experienced food insecurity in 2014.”
This is from a report the Council of Economic Advisers has released titled Long-Term Benefits Of The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (December 2015).
- These households—which included 15 million children—lacked the resources necessary for consistent and dependable access to food (the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s definition of food insecurity).
- In 2014, 40 percent of all food-insecure households—and nearly 6 percent of US households overall—were considered to have very low food security. This means that, in nearly seven million households, at least one person in the household missed meals and experienced disruptions in food intake due to insufficient resources for food.
Those are a lot of people in need a assistance. But, it’s even more than that.
- SNAP benefits lifted at least 4.7 million people out of poverty in 2014—including 2.1 million children. SNAP also lifted more than 1.3 million children out of deep poverty, or above half of the poverty line.
- Further, a recent study based on administrative data suggests that these numbers may significantly undercount the number of people who benefit from SNAP. The study estimates that SNAP lifted as many as 10 million people, including 4.9 million children, out of poverty in 2012.
[my emphasis]
Those are millions of people that truly need assistance in putting food on the table. Having been someone who has looked into SNAP benefits in the past, it is not a lot of money, but when you need anything to help with your financial burdens, SNAP assistance can be a godsend. The growing attack on public assistance can be connected to when conservative voices (starting about 40 to 50 years ago) began connecting what was once a farm assistance program in the 1930s—and predominantly white—to being an urban, and let’s be serious, people of color, issue. That’s when suddenly, it became a “drain” on society.
What we now call SNAP grew out of farm support programs put in place during the Great Depression. When crop prices plummeted in the early 1930s, the government stepped in to help farmers by buying commodities, then distributed those goods to hungry families through relief agencies. Today the program can still be seen as a boon to farmers — and to communities generally. The USDA estimates that every dollar in SNAP spending generates $1.79 in economic activity. "People think of it as a drain," says the Urban Institute's Waxman, "but it's an economic generator."
Paul Ryan and his ilk are racists who hate the poor. It’s a very simple worldview to understand.