$17.50

$17.50 a day.  What do I spend that much on?  Easily a tank of gas, breakfast and lunch, odds and ends at the grocery store, etc.  In the Seattle Times today there is a story about a single mom of two teenage girls living in Tacoma.  If you divide her monthly food stamp allotment up by the number of days in a month, $17.50 is all she can spend to feed herself and her two kids.  Her children's father does not pay her child support.  She is unemployed and training to be a a medical office assistant.  She cannot afford to buy food at the Safeway, which is close to her home because it's too expensive.  Her car died, so she spends her money taking the bus to and from a Walmart much farther away so she can try to find cheaper food.  I shop at Safeway.  You can easily spend $6 on a couple of pounds of non-organic apples.  There isn't a lot of wiggle room for things like meat or fresh fruits and vegetables on $17.50 a day.  

I challenge those people out there who think that people are living it up on food stamps to look at what they eat, drink and feed their children in a day and ask themselves if, realistically, they could feed a family of more than one person on such an income.  It's easy to label all food stamp recipients as the mysterious "they" and believe the hype about people cheating the system.  Let's be honest.  Wealthy people cheat on their taxes when they are the most able to afford to pay them.  There will always be people who won't do right to save their lives.  But we don't arrest or penalize ALL rich people because of the few who commit tax fraud.  Cheaters make up a small percentage of those on the program.  Let's be clear here.  These attacks on SNAP are about further disconnecting the working poor from society.  A 2010 study conducted by the Urban Institute found that the use of SNAP benefits reduced chance of food insecurity by 30 percent!  Before you buy into the "welfare queen" mentality, here are some facts.  According to the USDA, 48% of SNAP recipients are children and another 8% are elderly people 60 and over.  So which of these kids is a "cheat?"  Fewer than 10% of families who receive food stamps also receive TANF ("welfare") benefits.  Only around ONE CENT on every dollar paid out in SNAP is lost to fraud or trafficking.

A society is defined by how it cares for its children and its poor.  And shame on anyone who believes that children should be allowed to starve in the wealthiest nation on the planet just in case their parents MIGHT be cheating the system.  At the end of the day, by attempting to not fund the SNAP program, that's exactly what the GOP-controlled House has said.  Times are hard for a lot of people right now.  Many of the kids your kids go to school will have NO FOOD at home without those benefits.  And most of their parents never thought it would happen to them....until it did.  According to Feeding America, in 2011, 16.1 MILLION (22%) of American children lived in poverty.  Hunger has a face, and it is the face of a child.