Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is pushing a new amendment that would make it more difficult for people to receive food stamps by restricting eligibility requirements and eliminating a planned $9 billion funding increase for the program. Sessions says his plan is intended to reduce the deficit and combat fraud, which he claims is rampant. From ABC News’ Top Line today:
SESSIONS: No program in our government has surged out of control more dramatically than food stamps. And nothing is being done about it. <...> Multimillion dollar lottery winners are getting food stamps because the money is considered to be an asset not an income. One of the fast and furious gun buyers –
HOST: But hold on, for ever lottery winner that has food stamps, there’s probably a lot more people who really need them who have them, right?
SESSIONS: Well look, do you think there are four times as many people who need food stamps today as in 2001. That answers itself. <...> We cannot do this. We do not have the money. Congress doesn’t understand that we can’t afford to double the program every three years.
It’s shockingly ignorant at best and dishonest at worst for Sessions — the ranking GOP member of the Senate Budget Committee — to completely ignore the role the economy has played on food stamp usage. The cost of the program has jumped because more Americans are out of work and wages are down, thus more people need assistance. Food prices have also gone up, adding additional costs. But the cost of the program will come down on its own as the economy recovers and more people can afford to feed themselves.
In fact, the food stamp program has been critical for reducing poverty and pumping money into local economies during the down economy, so cutting it now would not only take food out of peoples’ mouths, but could slow down the recovery. No one is trying to “double the program every three years” as Sessions claims. (Currently, nearly one in five Alabamians is on Food Stamps.)
keep reading at:
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/20/349131/jeff-sessions-food-stamps-out-of-control/