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Back in January, resident Biden issued an order asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to “consider” updating food stamp benefits to reflect “the true cost of a basic healthy diet.” When your boss asks you to consider doing something, most employees—at least those interested in keeping their jobs—know this isn’t really a request at all. Fast-forward to August 16. Not surprisingly, the USDA responded to Biden’s “request” by increasing food stamp benefits by an astounding 25 percent. That’s a massive expansion of welfare—and it’s harmful, misguided, and illegal. If the administration were being honest in its stated claims of...

President Joe Biden’s administration has approved a significant and permanent increase in the levels of food aid available to needy families — the largest single increase in the program’s history. Starting in October, average benefits for food stamps — officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP — will rise more than 25 percent above pre-pandemic levels. The increased assistance will be available indefinitely to all 42 million SNAP beneficiaries. The increase coincides with the end of a 15 percent boost in SNAP benefits that was ordered as a pandemic protection measure. That benefit expires at the end...

httpThe jump in benefits, the biggest in the program’s history, comes after a revision of the initiative’s nutrition standards that supporters say will reduce hunger and better reflect how Americans eat.

Agricultural commodity prices have surged almost 50% since mid-2020, causing concerns over food price inflation around the world and sometimes resulting in increased export taxes and quotas by producers at a time when importing countries want to import more. We can identify four major factors driving the surge across agri commodities that will remain active in 2021: 1) US dollar weakness: Rabobank forecasts the US dollar to remain soft through 2021 (US dollar index -7% lower since mid-2020), but no further weakness is expected. 2) Weather: La Niña could extend into the US spring planting season. 3) Global demand: Good...

President Joe Biden will sign another round of executive orders on Friday, these aimed at providing assistance for those facing food insecurity, protecting American workers and providing economic relief to struggling families. Biden kicked off his presidency with a series of orders aimed at undoing much of President Donald Trump's legacy and helping those devastated by the coronavirus pandemic. On Friday he will sign executive orders aimed at speeding up delivery of stimulus checks to families who haven't received them and increasing food aid for children who normally rely on school meals as a main source of food.

... The cards, known as P-EBT (for Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer), are entirely legitimate. As it happened, every child enrolled in public school in New York City would receive one regardless of family income. The program, which delivers $880 million to New York State, was paid for by the federal government, a result of the economic relief package passed by Congress in the earliest phases of the coronavirus outbreak. The sum of $420 was meant to equal the cost of meals that a child would have received in the spring had school been open. While the notion of people who...

An additional 5.9 million people in the United States are on food stamps since the coronavirus pandemic began in March 2020, according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The USDA data showed that in March 2020, the month the pandemic hit the U.S., 37,140,169 individuals were receiving food stamps. Yet in April, that number soared by an estimated 5.9 million to 42,995,224 individuals.

Angelina Jolie is calling on Congress to increase food assistance to families across the United States in the next coronavirus stimulus bill. The Academy Award-winning actress and humanitarian is advocating on behalf of the millions of families across the country who rely on things like free meals for their kids at schools that are no longer available as people lose work and classrooms remain empty due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer shared with USA Today, the 44-year-old...

A Trump administration rule that would have tightened work requirements for food stamps was blocked by a federal judge on Friday, who cited the rapidly spreading coronavirus in her decision. D.C. District Court Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell granted a preliminary injunction blocking the new rule, which government estimates predicted would kick as many as 700,000 Americans off of food stamps. “Especially now, as a global pandemic poses widespread health risks, guaranteeing that government officials at both the federal and state levels have flexibility to address the nutritional needs of residents and ensure their well-being through programs like SNAP, is...

Last month, the Trump administration rolled out its Fiscal Year 2021 federal budget request—and progressive critics howled. “Trump’s budget is a $292 billion attack on poor Americans,” Mother Jones alleged. Vox accused Trump of cutting Medicare and Medicaid and lying about it. Kentucky Democratic representative John Yarmuth claimed that Trump was proposing “deep cuts to critical programs that help American families” and “destructive changes to Medicaid, SNAP, Social Security.” The anger was mostly hot air because, as National Review’s Robert VerBruggen notes, the budget is “an irrelevant document that mainly serves to give political journalists stuff to complain about.” It’s...

From Hawaii to Pennsylvania, states are scrambling to blunt the impact, with roughly 700,000 people at risk of losing benefits unless they meet certain work, training or school requirements. They've filed a multi-state lawsuit, expanded publicly funded job training, developed pilot programs and doubled down efforts to reach vulnerable communities, including the homeless, rural residents and people of color.Richard Butler poses for a portrait in an apartment that a friend is letting him and his fiance live in on Chicago's Southside. (AP Photo/Char,/ales Rex Arbogast) Social service agencies say they won't be able to fill the gap, making increased homelessness...

Calling it “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion” and contrary to law, 14 states, New York City and Washington, D.C., asked a federal court in a lawsuit Thursday to vacate a final rule that if implemented will cut off nearly 700,000 people from food stamp benefits due to the imposition of stricter requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents.“Plaintiffs respectfully request that this Court vacate the Rule and enjoin its implementation because it is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and otherwise not in accordance with law under the Administrative Procedure…because the Rule was promulgated without observance of procedure required by...

Indeed, the latest data from the Department of Agriculture shows that 7.7 million fewer Americans receive food stamps now than did when Trump entered the White House. The Agriculture Department administers the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, but the actual food stamp benefits are distributed by individual states.

For more than 34 million Americans, food stamps help them survive. Now there's concern proposed changes in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) program could drastically cut those benefits, as the Trump administration said it wants to reduce waste. But a couple CBS News correspondent Adriana Diaz spoke to worries the changes could hurt families like theirs trying to get by. After Patience Kollie and John Spinola's rent nearly doubled, they had to move into their car with their two kids, a toddler and a teenager. They said the stress and anxiety caused Kollie to go on medical leave, leaving...

On December 4, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) made a long-overdue and much-needed rule change to the nation’s beleaguered Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as “food stamps.” According to a USDA press release, “At the direction of President Donald J. Trump, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue today announced a final rule to move more able-bodied recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) towards self-sufficiency and into employment. The rule restores the system to what Congress intended: assistance through difficult times, not a way of life.”In other words, the new rule aims to ensure that...

New food stamp rules will save taxpayers $5.5 billion over 5 years DECEMBER 5, 2019 BY SHARYL ATTKISSON 2 COMMENTS Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or “Food Stamps” A new food stamp rule taking effect April first will save U.S. taxpayers $5.5 billion over five years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers food stamps. Food stamps or the “SNAP” program gave the average recipient household about $250 a month in 2018. Food stamps are funded with tax dollars. According to the government, 40 million Americans were on food stamps in 2018. In 2017, a little over 9% of...

On 18 different occasions in 2019, a Massachusetts EBT card was swiped in Hawaii — including one that was used twice at a posh island resort where rooms fetch $800 a night, a report published Monday said. The Boston Herald said it reviewed more than 2 million EBT expenditures over the past year and found thousands of out-of-state transactions that included withdrawals in Las Vegas and Alaska. The Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards are issued to needy citizens who qualify and are replenished monthly. The state's Department of Transitional Assistance bars cardholders from using the cards for vacation services —...

The Trump administration is set to tighten work requirements for recipients of federal food aid, potentially rendering hundreds of thousands of people ineligible for the program by mid-2020. The administration said Wednesday that it had completed a new rule curbing states’ ability to shield adults without dependents from federal work requirements tied to receiving assistance through the program formerly administered via food stamps. Officials say the rule, which takes effect April 1, 2020, will save the government billions of dollars and encourage more people to work at a time when jobless rates are near a 50-year low. The rule is...

Three proposed rule changes by the Trump administration could cause millions of poor people to lose access to food stamps and decrease the size of the benefit for millions more. Over the past year, the Department of Agriculture proposed three changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP or food stamps. The new rules create stricter work requirements for program eligibility, cap deductions for utility allowances and "reform" the way 40 states automatically enroll families into SNAP when they receive other forms of federal aid. A study by the Urban Institute released this week examined the three rules...

About 50,000 Cook County residents who receive food stamps are going to have to find jobs next year — or risk losing their benefits. Starting Jan. 1, food stamp recipients in Cook County who are able-bodied, under the age of 50 and not living with children or other dependents will be restricted to three months of food assistance in a three-year period unless they work at least 80 hours a month. They can also meet the requirement by participating in a work-related activity, such as job training or volunteering. The vast majority of Illinois’ 1.8 million SNAP recipients — most...