Food Stamps Challenge Lawmakers
Thanks to reader Stephen M. for this news tip!
Twenty-six million people are relegated to a food stamp budget of $21 a week as part of a government the food stamp program, which helps families buy food as they make the transition from welfare to work. Four members of Congress took a challenge to eat off the same budget for one week. Launched by Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski and advocates for low-income Americans, The Food Stamp Challenge Week, which ended May 21, aimed at raising awareness for the farm bill coming up for reauthorization this summer in Congress. It asks for hefty $4 billion to be added to the yearly $33 billion dollar budget for anti-hunger programs. The result could mean an additional $48 a month for a family of four on the food stamp program.
News reports show that people around the country participated in addition to the four who made the headlines (Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Massachusetts, Jo Ann Emerson, R-Missouri, Jan Schakowsky, D-Illinois, and Tim Ryan, D-Ohio). They blogged about their experiences at: foodstampchallenge.typepad.com.
McGovern says the experience gave him “much more sympathy over how the lack of energy and the hard choices on how to stretch the budget and put food on the table might also stretch one’s patience and stress a marriage.” Schakowsky wrote, “Every day 35 million people in America struggle to put food on the table. I am not one of them, not even close. But just this small effort to put myself in their shoes, has made even more real to me the immorality of such a fact in the richest country in the world.”
A Seattle Times editorial had scathing reactions to the publicity stunt: “Rather than highlight a very serious issue, the congressional food pact trivializes it.” The editors added, “It remains to be seen whether lawmakers are willing to make fiscal trade-offs to pay for an increase, not just in food stamp benefits, but in spending for the networks that distribute food to 500,000 low-income seniors nationwide.”
Sources: foodstampchallenge.typepad.com, www.washingtonpost.com, seattletimes.nwsource.com, www.boston.com, www.sltrib.com
RELEVANT intern Meredith Norfleet helped me with this research as well.
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