Posted on 08/03/2014 7:00:11 PM PDT by Kaslin
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, commonly referred to as food stamps) has seen a meteoric rise in enrollment in the last fifteen years, and especially in the wake of the 2008 recession. The spike in SNAP recipients post-2008 is to be expected - but the maintenance of those high enrollment numbers is an anomaly.
American Enterprise Institute scholar Robert Doar testified before the House Committee on Agriculture recently to examine this exact question. Doar notes that changes in the SNAP program that took place during this time period may disincentivize work requirements - and keep SNAP participation among working-age population artificially high.
As Doar notes:
In the four years following the end of the downturn in 2009, the number of SNAP recipients increased by 7.3 million. Moreover, the percentage of the population receiving food stamps increased from 13 percent to 15 percent. To give perspective on this number, we can compare the recent recovery with the recovery after the recession of the 1980’s, whose duration and unemployment levels are most comparable. Adjusting for population, in the four years following the 1981-82 recession, there was a 12.5 percent decline in food stamp recipients. In the four years following the 2007-09 recession, SNAP recipients increased by 15.6 percent. Were this recent recovery to have behaved similarly to that of the 1980’s, by 2013 only 11.5 percent of the population would have been receiving SNAP benefits: 36 million individuals as opposed to 47.6 million. That is not a small difference.
By itself, SNAP benefits may not be enough to reduce the incentive for a recipient to go to work, or to move from part-time to full-time regular employment, but when combined with unreported earnings or other assistance programs -- perhaps most notably unemployment insurance benefits – the program does appear to allow a significant number of adult recipients to remain out of work longer than they might otherwise. Without some effort to require these SNAP recipients to participate in employment programs such as those offered under TANF, I fear that the number of non-working, nonelderly, nondisabled SNAP recipients will remain high.
The SNAP program is actually one of the most helpful and targeted of our federal welfare state program. But as said by Doar, who a former SNAP overseer in his time in New York State government, the program has to be viewed as a piece of the overall safety net, and the incentives it provides in tandem with other programs may be harmful. The post-recession increase in utilization of the SNAP program has to be viewed as a new and unique - and possibly detrimental - phenomenon.
Let the good times roll!
What you are see in in the graphs is the rise of illegal aliens and other fraudulent recipients signing up for food stamps.
That is why the number of food stamp recipients is increasing despite the drop in unemployment.
The rapid rise in food stamp usage tracks the waves of massive illegal immigration almost perfectly
There used to be a little bit of shame attached to receiving government handouts. People who love this country and have friends and family receiving aid when they are able-bodied and could work in a job (even if it was "beneath them") need to start making the point that, "We're all paying for you, when are you going to start paying for yourself?" That sort of thing, on a person-to-person basis, either gets you booted out of the house, or starts them thinking.
Then why hasn't Free Herpes Day become more successful?
Documentation File on the 2014 Impeachment of B. Hussein Obama, aka Barry Soetoro a former Foreign Student from Indonesia, and still a legal Citizen of the Sovereign Nation of Indonesia.
If so many of the new jobs that are being added each month are only part time, then the income level allowing eligibility for food stamps, especially for families, may still be in force.
Why is it odd that slobs don’t want to work? They contribute nothing to society, and would choose for it to stay that way if given the opportunity.
I can remember the day when “being on food stamps” was a shameful thing. Those that were receiving help busted their ass to get off food stamps.
But, I’m old.
Once the goodies arrive, they never go away.
If you are not going to contribute anything besides the exact same post on every thread on FR, why don’t you go do it on a different forum such as DU or HuffPo? Even pMSNBC!
Yes. College students are often eligible. Get them dependent early.
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