Free Republic

... Kellie O’Connell, CEO of Nourishing Hope, said the past four years have “felt like one crisis after another.” "We're providing more services to more people than we did at the height of the pandemic. And now we're really responding to a major influx of migrants and asylum-seekers who have arrived in Chicago in the past two years, while continuing to serve Chicagoans who have turned to us for years,” O’Connell said. Yet while local food pantries report an increase in demand for help, a federal nutrition assistance program serving women and young children has seen a big drop in...

(NEXSTAR) – As the clock ticks down toward a potential partial shutdown of the federal government this week, millions who rely on federal assistance for food could be left in the balance. If Congress fails to reach a deal to fund the government, a partial government shutdown would be triggered on March 1. That partial shutdown would impact several federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which manages SNAP and WIC food assistance. SNAP, which stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, used to be called the Food Stamp Program. The program helps low-income and no-income families buy groceries...

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, one of the most immediate consequences was also one of the most severe: a spike in hunger. Those who lost jobs had less money to buy food. Supply chain disruptions led to empty store shelves. With fewer transportation options, even simple things like traveling back and forth to the grocery store became a lot harder. Suddenly, millions of additional families were having a much more difficult time putting food on the table.

The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) serves to safeguard the health of low-income pregnant and postpartum women, infants, and children younger than 5 years who are at nutritional risk. WIC served about 6.2 million participants each month in fiscal year 2021, including an estimated 43 percent of all infants in the United States. Federal program costs for WIC totaled $5 billion in fiscal year 2021. Congress authorizes a specific amount of funding annually for WIC operations and has funded WIC each year since the late 1990s to serve all eligible applicants. To qualify for WIC,...

New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik along with nearly 30 other congressional representatives on Wednesday slammed the Biden administration's proposal to reduce the amount of milk given out as part of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), arguing that it will "exacerbate the crisis families are already facing with skyrocketing prices at the grocery store." According to the bipartisan joint letter addressed to Department of Agriculture Secretary Thomas J. Vilsack, the proposed rule would "result in a substantial reduction in the maximum monthly allowance (MMA) for milk through the WIC program." "The current MMA for...

The new American way of life... For a guy and his girlfriend with two kids, all you have to do is follow these proven steps: 1. Don't marry her! 2. Always use your mom's address to get your mail. 3. The guy buys a house. 4. The guy rents out the house to his girlfriend with his two kids. 5. Section 8 will pay $900 a month for a 3 bedroom home. 6. Girlfriend signs up for Obamacare, so the guy doesn't have to pay for family insurance. 7. Girlfriend gets to go to college for free for being a...

One shocking fact that has come to light as the nation wrestles with a baby formula shortage is that half of U.S. infants receive WIC (federal food assistance). According to the USDA website, “The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides federal grants to states for supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, and to infants and children up to age 5 who are found to be at nutritional risk.” “WIC serves 53 percent of all infants born in the United States,” the USDA proudly tells us....

Philadelphia’s outlandish soda tax is what Democratic-party politics looks like when it lets its freak flag fly. So many classic elements are there: (failed) social engineering and “think of the children!” on one side, paid for with a punitive tax on poor people and destroyed businesses, which means destroyed jobs, which in turn means lives upended. What lives? Greedy capitalists with monocles, maybe? No, they’ll be fine. Think of ex-cons trying to regain their footing in society. To review this debacle, in 2017 Philadelphia, seeking to fund a universal pre-K program, slapped mammoth sin taxes on Coke and Pepsi (and...

The end of 2018 seemed to signal good things to come for America’s farmers. Fresh off the passage of the farm bill, which reauthorized agriculture, conservation and safety net programs, the Agriculture Department last week announced a second round of direct payments to growers hardest hit by President Donald Trump’s trade war with China. Then parts of the government shut down. The USDA in a statement issued last week assured farmers that checks would continue to go out during the first week of the shutdown. But direct payments for farmers who haven’t certified production, as well as farm loans and...

Lawmakers are poised this month to wage a major battle over the House version of the Farm Bill, which will call for work requirements in the federal food stamp program that serves the poor. ( the vast majority of Farm Bill funds spending is on food stamps) Democrats are staunchly opposed to Conaway’s plan to add a 20-hour work or job training requirement for some able-bodied recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the formal name for the food stamp program............In the 2014 legislation, SNAP’s 10-year cost was $756 billion, or 80% of the entire $956 billion bill. The federal...

The very expensive ($70.9 billion in 2016) federal food stamp program (officially: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) is an open invitation to fraud. The latest indicator comes from Jacksonville, Florida. News4Jax.com (Channel 4 in Jacksonville) reports:

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Sedgwick County commissioners are being warned by the state not to ask participants in the federal Women, Infants and Children program about their citizenship. The Wichita Eagle reports the Kansas Department of Health and Environment says asking about immigration status before the state changes eligibility requirements could result in termination of the county's contract to operate WIC.

Washington’s potato saga continues.While the House considers a bill to include the potato in the WIC (Women, Infants and Children) food nutrition program, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is echoing First Lady Michelle Obama’s claims that including the potato is an assault on science.“Republicans are even going after the nutrition for pregnant women and children, the WIC program. Mandating the WIC program include more white potatoes. You know, were talking about fruits, vegetables, whole grains and the rest, and they have an amendment that says more white potatoes than nutritionists recommend,” Pelosi said during her Thursday press conference.“These assaults...

As the U.S. House of Representatives prepared to consider the fiscal year 2015 agricultural appropriations bill, the White House threatened to veto the legislation due to opposition related to funding provisions related to school nutrition programs, potatoes in the Women, Infants and Children program and other policy issues.This is the first veto threat from the White House for fiscal year 2015 spending bills.“The bill undermines key investments in financial oversight, injects political decision-making into science-based nutrition standards, and includes objectionable language riders,” said the official Statement of Administration Policy. “If the President were presented with H.R. 4800, his senior advisors...

Today, the National Potato Council praised the House for considering a bill to include the potato in its WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) food nutrition ("food stamp") program. The Council also debunked First Lady Michelle Obama's claims that including the potato would "override science" and that Americans are already eating enough of them.The Potato Council notes that the First Lady's science is based on old data - not the latest government reports:"Opponents of adding fresh potatoes to the WIC package are picking and choosing the science. Instead of relying on a 2005 report that looks at data from the mid-1990s,...

The continuing attention devoted to the blunders, incompetence, and lies surrounding the Obamacare rollout is much deserved. But we shouldn’t forget that the President’s health-care monstrosity is merely the latest and biggest of scores of government entitlement programs suffering from the same flawed progressive assumption––that government “experts” armed with coercive power alone can solve problems better left to the states, civil society, and the free market. In reality, such programs relentlessly metastasize, increasing as well fraud, waste, abuse, and costs. One such program is SNAP, the kinder and gentler name for what we used to call food stamps. Apparently the...

Shutdown puts WIC food program for vulnerable mothers at risk Jason Sickles, Yahoo! 2 hours ago DALLAS — In a shopping center parking lot 1,300 miles from Washington’s bureaucracy and bickering, teen mom Karina Luciano loaded a watermelon and baby formula into her car. Luciano didn’t realize the federal assistance program that just purchased the food items for her children, Aimee, 2, and Jaiden, 11 months, is now in jeopardy because of the government shutdown. “Oh my god, I think I’m going to cry,” Luciano said upon learning the news. “This is really bad.” Nearly 9 million low-income mothers and...

In addition to illegally trafficking in food stamps for years, Mohammad’s store operated illegally after the secretary of state canceled its business license in 2009 because of Mohammad’s failure to pay the business’s taxes. Store manager Ahmad Damra and clerk Mahmoud Jamil Damrah allegedly helped Mohammad defraud the SNAP and WIC programs for a total of approximately $780,710. Court records allege that the store traded customers’ WIC checks for a cash, allowing customers circumvent program restrictions on using taxpayer funding to purchase products such as beer and cigarettes.

Man in $3.8M food stamp fraud case sentenced A federal judge on Thursday sentenced Al-Idu Al-Gaheem to one year and one day in prison for his role in a scheme that bilked $3.8 million from the federal food stamp program. Al-Gaheem, the former owner of two Dayton View businesses and the imam of Masjid At-Taqwa mosque, was the second of four defendants to be sentenced in the case. All four defendants have pleaded guilty. Al-Gaheem faced as many as four years in prison after he pleaded guilty in August to felony charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy...

ROCKWALL — Cathy Samford, a volleyball coach and science teacher, was fired from Heritage Christian Academy for getting pregnant and not being married, the school acknowledged. "I looked it up and thought, 'They can't do this,'" said Samford, 29. For almost three years, she coached volleyball at the private school. Samford was named "Coach of the Year" and recently began teaching science. But when she got pregnant last fall, the school fired her because she was not married. "We all have different views and interpretations," Samford said. "It's not necessarily the Christian thing to do to throw somebody aside because...