Tim Fernholz, whom you'll remember from his Prospect days, reported at the National Journal today that the House Agriculture Committee has endorsed a cut to the food-stamp program, known as SNAP. SNAP is dealt with within the USDA, and the committee likely wants to deflect potential cuts to direct-payment programs made to farmers, Fernholz notes. President Obama and others have endorsed cuts and reforms to the subsidies program as a way to curb spending, but some of the representatives on the committee likely have wealthy constitutes who benefit.
As Pat Garofalo notes at Think Progress, this is an especially bad move in a faltering economy, particularly right now, with food prices on the rise. Another report from The New York Times' Sam Roberts shows why the aid is so important. He writes that the influx of federal aid in the form of food stamps and tax benefits prevented a quarter of a million city residents from sliding into poverty during the recession. According to the federal measure, poverty in the city remained the same, but the city calculates its poverty rate on its own and found that it rose more than 2 percentage points even with that help.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg started the effort to modernize the way poverty is calculated in the city, and it calculates the cost of housing in addition to the other goods the federal government's measure deems essential. New York City often finds itself at the vanguard of efforts to alleviate the suffering that poverty can cause. Maybe that's because anyone who lives in New York is confronted with poverty and working-class families struggling financially everyday, in a way that many Americans are not. Either way, it's hard to imagine another 250,000 people slipping below the poverty line just because some congressmen want their constituents to get paid.
