The right’s food stamp embarrassment: A history lesson for the haters

[unhappycamper]

http://www.salon.com/2014/09/01/the_rights_food_stamp_embarrassment_a_history_lesson_for_the_haters/



While conservatives love to beat up on the SNAP program, there's an awkward little fact that might horrify them

The right’s food stamp embarrassment: A history lesson for the haters
Caitlin Rathe
Monday, Sep 1, 2014 03:00 PM EST

Food stamps became part of American life 50 years ago this Sunday when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Food Stamp Act into law on Aug. 31, 1964. The program has been a whipping boy almost ever since, especially from conservatives who call the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, the contemporary name for food stamps) a costly and demoralizing example of government overreach.

But SNAP was not an idea first created by liberal do-gooders of the 1960s. Food stamps emerged three decades earlier with active participation of businessmen, the heroes of the exact group of people who want to see the program dissolved today.

~snip~

Much like grocers in the stamp towns of the late 1930s, grocery chains today continue to bring in increased sales from SNAP receipts during recessions. Remember last winter when stimulus funds expired and Wal-Mart disclosed lower than expected fourth quarter profits? While Wal-Mart refuses to disclose its total revenues from SNAP, it is estimated they took in 18 percent of total SNAP benefits in 2013, or close to $13 billion in sales. They publicly reported lower earnings per share as “the sales impact from the reduction in SNAP benefits that went into effect Nov. 1 is greater than we expected.”

SNAP recipients, then, are not the program’s only beneficiaries. Businesses profit handsomely from them, too. How ironic that in today’s concentrated grocery-retail market, the chains most ideologically opposed to welfare spending benefit the most from this welfare program. Even more ironic is the fact that the idea behind SNAP originated with grocery men in the 1930s who saw a way to route welfare spending through their businesses. When will today’s conservatives claim as their own these daring and entrepreneurial businessmen who, in part, made the Food Stamp Program possible?

[ellenrr]

1. Food stamps - big cut

Mine just went from $115 to $39.00.
so did a friend of mine (went to $39.00, don't know what it was before).

apparently new stuff going on: cuts, new restrictions