The public program known popularly as food stamps is rare in that its official name is actually more descriptive and to the point than its nickname. Officially, it’s the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also shortened to SNAP. The literal title serves as a reminder that there are people who need financial assistance to supplement the nutrition they are able to provide for themselves. To have any chance to be a healthy and productive member of society, everyone needs adequate nutrition. If we truly intend to better our society and nation as a whole, we should commit to providing supplemental nutrition to those who need it.
According to the Missouri Association for Social Welfare – which, under the leadership of Jeanette Mott Oxford, has emerged as a reasoned voice of conscience on issues affecting low-income residents of our state – SNAP provided nutrition assistance to nearly 287,000 people from the six Missouri counties in the St. Louis metropolitan area this August. Changes in the state program recommended by Gov. Jay Nixon would deprive 25,000 of these St. Louis-area residents of their supplemental nutrition. “These changes would overload local food pantries and create additional suffering among the poorest of the poor,” Mott Oxford says.
Nixon claims that Missouri needs to remove unemployed adults from SNAP now due to possible future cuts proposed by Republicans in Congress. “Rather than be in reactive mode, we thought the best thing to do was to prepare for the future and move forward accordingly,” Nixon told reporters on October 11. The Nixon administration estimates that just over six percent of current food stamp recipients would lose benefits, but the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities projects more substantial change, with more than nine percent of current recipients affected. A nine percent reduction would deprive 25,818 area residents of supplemental nutrition. There are 118,800 SNAP recipients in St. Louis County, of whom 10,692 are at-risk of losing assistance. In the city of St. Louis, nearly 10,000 people (the estimate is 9,644) of the 107,159 people currently receiving SNAP stand to lose the benefit under Nixon’s proposed cuts.
“If you kick people off of food stamps, they don’t stop needing food,” Mott Oxford says. “Most every person denied food stamps will be at local pantries as a survival mechanism.” Most area pantries provide a three-day supply of food, while a few share up to a week’s worth of food, according to MASW hunger Task Force Chair Glenn Koenen. To replace food stamps, Koenen says, a pantry would need to provide from four to 10 times more food to each person than it does now. “Our pantries are already critically short of food,” Koenen says. “In many places, hungry people are being turned away. We can’t offset the pain of these food stamp cuts.”
Last week, State Sen. Jamilah Nasheed reminded Nixon of this same reality in a stinging open letter. “Cutting food stamps at this time is nothing less than callous,” Nasheed wrote, “and I will use every and all means to organize and mobilize opposition to this uncommonly cruel action by our governor.”
True, this program has been targeted for federal cuts. Some Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have called for $40 billion in cuts to food stamps over the next decade. One proposal is to make unemployed adults ineligible for food stamps. To receive assistance, an adult without dependent children would need to work 20 hours every week. However, requiring employment for someone to be eligible for supplemental nutrition does not make sense in an economy with chronically high levels of unemployment. “This economy just is not producing enough jobs for everyone,” Mott Oxford says rightly.
Nixon makes a mistake if he pushes for cuts at the state level before major federal cuts are enacted. Missouri already had been granted a waiver that lasts until October 2014, protecting this population for almost another full year. A year is a lifetime in politics, and much could change – particularly in the makeup of a new Congress in the wake of the federal government shutdown and resulting threat to allow a default on the federal debt. We join MASW and Nasheed in urging Nixon to rescind his proposed rule changes to SNAP – ASAP.
