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food stamps
Imagine If the Fight Was Over How to Improve and Expand Medicare and Social Security—Not Destroy Them
If we help families survive rocky times rather than fall deeper into poverty, all of us benefit as a society; if we don’t, then millions of stories like mine won’t be possible.
Jun 02, 2024
Life is unpredictable. And sometimes, no matter how hard you work, life throws curve balls that hit you in the gut.
That’s what our tax dollars are supposed to be for—a helping hand when we’re most in need. More than once in my life, the social safety net came through for my family. And thanks to that help, we’re able to give back today.
My mother worked hard as a carpenter and educator for most of the years I was growing up. But her income just wasn’t enough to pay for rent, food, childcare, and other basic needs.
Imagine what our nation would look like if we fully invested in the programs most of us need at one time or another rather than constantly fighting to keep the little we have.
Thankfully, she kept us fed with WIC (the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition assistance program), SNAP (then called “food stamps”), and frequent visits to food pantries. And after living in a shelter for the first three years of my life, we were able to get Section 8 housing.
But life continued to throw curve balls.
My mom suffered a stroke while pregnant with my brother, who was born prematurely in 2002. She had to relearn how to walk and talk—and my brother needed serious health interventions due to complications of his premature birth. Thankfully, we got some help from Social Security and Medicare.
All of these supports enabled me to get an education, get into college, and help my family.
When my mother’s health failed to the point that she was on dialysis, my 10-year-old little brother needed to be cared for. So I moved him halfway across the country to live with me. Suddenly, I was a student, a worker, and a young single caretaker.
My mother recently passed away. But thanks to her hard work and the help we got from public programs, I was able to get a master’s degree. After experiencing the vital importance of those programs, I knew I had to devote my life to helping others access the same assistance that had been life-saving for me and my family.
I now work at an organization in Indianapolis, where I help residents achieve their family goals through basic needs support, community engagement, and case management. Ultimately, we explore the barriers keeping families from economic stability and work with them to find solutions.
My little brother, meanwhile, is 21 and a trade school graduate. He’s gainfully employed as an aircraft cleaner at the local airport and a production associate at a manufacturing company. I’m so proud of all that we’ve been able to accomplish because help was there for us when we needed it.
Yet even as I tell my story, there are lawmakers who would cut affordable housing and rental assistance programs. They would slash nutrition programs and Medicaid. There are even lawmakers and cities who seek to criminalize homelessness, which has now gotten the attention of the Supreme Court.
The deep cuts to social programs the House majority has proposed would slash investments that are already insufficient. Due to the lack of affordable housing in this country, only 1 in 4 eligible families actually receive housing vouchers like my family relied on. These cuts would make it even harder.
Thanks to the help we got, we give back as good as we received and more—that’s how a healthy system works. If we help families survive rocky times rather than fall deeper into poverty, all of us benefit as a society. If we don’t, then millions of stories like mine won’t be possible.
Imagine what our nation would look like if we fully invested in the programs most of us need at one time or another rather than constantly fighting to keep the little we have. We shouldn’t be cutting our public programs—we should be expanding them.
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When Poverty Is a Policy Choice, the Safety Net Must Be Defended
Lawmakers have allowed life-saving programs collapse and poor families like mine are the ones paying the price. It's time to fight back.
Dec 04, 2023
As a 32 year-old mother, I understand the extreme challenges my single mom faced better than ever. But I’ve also seen the life-changing difference a strong social safety net can make.
Above all, I’ve learned that poverty is a policy choice, not a personal one. We can reverse it — if we choose.
I grew up poor and lost my mother to suicide when I was just 14. Mostly homeless, I floated between sofas, cars, and the streets for years. Eventually I got food stamps, which were a tremendous help. With help from a friend, I got a job as a supervisor at an insurance company. And with help from a county program, my partner and I were able to secure an apartment.
Lawmakers and middle-class voters need to understand that poor people work as hard as humanly possible. We have families, we go to school, we access every resource we can find. It takes tremendous mental strength to survive poverty.
At nearly 30, it was my first real break from homelessness. Then the pandemic hit and I lost my job. But thankfully, we received the expanded Child Tax Credit for my partner’s children and other income supports that helped us stay in our apartment.
Then my partner hit, too. When the abuse began, I had to flee.
It was a challenging time, but the expansion of the safety net in the early days of the Biden administration offered hope. Even as I was trying to find a new job and place to live — and hiding from my abuser — the pandemic assistance made it possible for me to do that.
My story isn’t unique. The investments in the American Rescue Plan, including the expanded Child Tax Credit, reduced poverty and unemployment to record lows, kept small businesses afloat, avoided a recession, and staved off hunger. Nearly 40 million families — including over 60 million children — were helped, and child poverty was cut nearly in half.
Unfortunately, lawmakers let these programs expire. And now those gains are being reversed — poverty made a record jump last year.
Now I have a baby and my resources are thin. My landlord threatens me with eviction nearly every month. I’ve borrowed money. I’ve searched for every church, every charity, and every government resource so I can feed, clothe, and house my baby. You won’t find more resourceful people than mothers trying to feed their children.
But with our shredded safety net, it’s not enough — for me or many others. Average rents are unaffordable for working families across the country, and where I live there’s a 12-15 year waiting list for Section 8 housing. Nationally, a child care funding cliff is expected to close over 70,000 child care centers nationwide unless lawmakers act.
And the hardline conservatives now running the House are threatening to cut even more programs, like Women, Infants and Children (WIC) benefits, that parents like me rely on.
Lawmakers and middle-class voters need to understand that poor people work as hard as humanly possible. We have families, we go to school, we access every resource we can find. It takes tremendous mental strength to survive poverty.
I don’t want other mothers to suffer — I want more for my child and theirs. And together, we can win it.
I found an advocacy organization called Parent Voices and began volunteering with them. I learned how to help other poor people advocate for better child care and budgets that prioritize children and families. I feel more empowered and hopeful now.
I’ve come to see that though life is a struggle, it’s a beautiful struggle when we all come together to make the change we want to see. Now we need lawmakers to hear our voices.
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Food Stamp Work Rules Harm Older Poor Americans
The new restrictions “put almost 750,000 older adults aged 50-54 at risk of losing food assistance,” the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities Found.
Sep 13, 2023
Life is getting even tougher for poor people in America. As poverty rates soar—due in part to policies such as cutting pandemic aid for poor and working-class people—new rules that kicked in September 1 only add to the suffering.
As if being poor and unable to afford food isn’t hard enough, new food stamps rules require all destitute Americans up to age 50 to work 80 hours a month for their monthly aid, under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Next year this will extend to 54year-olds.
Disturbingly, Republicans originally sought to impose work requirements on all recipients up to age 65, forcing older poor people to toil for their meager food assistance.
The new restrictions “put almost 750,000 older adults aged 50-54 at risk of losing food assistance,” according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), worsening hunger and poverty for older Americans.
“Meeting basic life-sustaining needs should not be contingent on meeting a work requirement.”
Already, elder poverty and hunger are severe and widespread. According to U.S. Census data, some 16.5 million Americans over age 65—nearly one in three—are living at or below 200% of the federal poverty level. This includes more women than men, and more than half of Black and Hispanic Americans over age 65, the National Council on Aging reports.
Working after age 50 is precarious. Most workers ages 51-64 do not have continuous employment. Meanwhile, the US economy's fastest-growing occupations, such as home health and personal care work, have 14% of older workers claiming food stamps to make ends meet.
As the CBPP explains, most SNAP recipients are already working, between jobs, or are “providing unpaid care” for children or other family members.
Research shows the new work rules are likely to diminish SNAP participation for older Americans. A 2023 study published by the American Economic Association found that “Overall program participation among adults who are subject to work requirements is reduced by 53 percent.” CBPP reports that, “Growing evidence shows that these SNAP requirements increase hardship.”
Putting the Poor and Seniors at Risk
Even before the new rules, according to the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC), “Millions of older adults who struggle against hunger are missing out on a critical program to help put food on the table”—with three in five eligible older adults losing out on SNAP benefits each month. According to the AARP, “an estimated 16 million (or 63 percent of) adults ages 50 and older who were eligible for SNAP did not participate in 2018.”
The new rules, the AARP wrote, “could worsen these barriers, increasing the risk that many older adults would not receive the SNAP benefits they are eligible for.”
Those benefits, while meager compared to people’s needs, provide low-income Americans with a critical economic and nutritional lifeline. Extensive research shows that “SNAP improves the health, nutrition, and budgets of vulnerable seniors,” according to Emily Allen of AARP.
Without this lifeline, older Americans who are denied food stamps “may be at increased risk of hunger and hunger-related health problems, such as diabetes, hypertension, and depression,” according to FRAC. “Food-insecure seniors often must choose between paying for food or medication,” according to Jim Weill, president of FRAC. SNAP, he notes, “helps ensure that seniors do not have to cut back on or skip meals altogether to pay for health care or other basic needs.”
Pushing Older Poor People to Work Longer
By design, the work-for-food policy pressures older folks back into the labor force. As harmful as the new restrictions are, they could get worse. Prior to the debt ceiling agreement, South Dakota Rep. Dusty Johnson proposed the America Works Act of 2023, seeking to extend work-for-food rules to age 65.
Johnson projected his own privileged situation onto other aging Americans: “As I approach 49 years old, I know I still have decades left of work ahead of me. My bill changes the maximum age rate… to be 65 years old, consistent with retirement and Medicare age.”
The parallels with efforts to cut Social Security are clear—both moves aim to coerce people to work longer into old age, and to reduce public benefits. The same lawmakers working to slash Social Security by pushing qualifying ages to 67 are seeking work requirements on poor seniors up to age 65.
States can ameliorate this expanded punishment of poor people by automatically enrolling Medicaid recipients in SNAP, as CBPP recommends. The state of New York’s Nutrition Improvement Project, for instance, automatically enrolls recipients of Supplemental Security Income who live alone into SNAP; and enables recipients to use their Medicaid benefit cards to access food stamps. A report found that by using data matching technology, state agencies can greatly expand access to benefits among older qualified poor people, leading to billions of dollars of assistance and local economic stimulus.
Working in old age can be engaging and rewarding, when it’s by choice rather than desperation or coercion. But as a 2022 Older Workers and Retirement Chartbook revealed, “Older workers who cannot afford to retire often face diminishing job quality and earnings as a result of loss of bargaining power.” Policies like the new SNAP work requirements coerce low-income Americans into work at older ages based on their economic desperation. It’s a harmful move that will only make life and survival harder for older poor people.Keep ReadingShow Less
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